Space exploration may be about going boldly where no-one has gone before, as Starship Enterprise Captain James T. Kirk often said, but it is also about understanding how to protect life back on earth, and promoting international cooperation.

That’s what former French astronaut Jean-François Clervoy told UN News’s Daniel Johnson, at a screening of two short films shot from space, The Overview Effect and A Beautiful Planet.

Mr. Clervoy, who flew twice on the Space Shuttle Atlantis and once on Discovery, spent a total of 675 hours in space.

He has been in Geneva this week to take part in the 2019 Space Security Conference hosted by UNIDIR, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research.