Opinion

As space activities and innovative technologies emerge around the world and the space economy becomes increasingly global, it is worth investigating how space services and applications can support strategic foresight and its embedding into policymaking. Understandably, amidst all this trouble on planet Earth, it is perhaps easy to forget how important space has become to us and our future.

The Earth Observation (EO) market is expected to grow in the area of prediction and detection of risks, post-disaster rescue, recovery efforts, infrastructure planning, urban development utilities, and national mapping agencies. Satellite data can be integrated into system control to construct warning systems for assets management, to effectively decrease the response time in operation and increase management of precise and predictive maintenance. In other words, the growth of EO data creates a potential growth both in mitigating against climate damage and economic and efficiency growth across industries, across regions. But this potential will only come to fruition if utilized.

The past four weeks have been eventful for the US Air Force. On Wednesday, February 1st 2023 an unknown floating balloon, the size of three school buses, was spotted flying over Billings, Montana, at around 18 km above the ground. On Friday, February 3rd, Mao Ning, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Foreign Minister’s spokesperson, released a note claiming that the airship was  “of a civilian nature, used for scientific research such as meteorology. Affected by the westerly wind and its control ability is limited, the airship seriously deviated from the scheduled route. China regrets that the airship strayed into the United States due to force majeure”.

2023 is a pivotal year for European space domain. With several challenges knocking at its doors -among others, the necessity to sever itself from Russia and to defend its communication assets, and the lack of a heavy rocket launcher -which makes the Union dependent on the American SpaceX for constellation launches- the discussion on how and where Europe should strategically invest to remain in the game is of pivotal relevance. The debate often focuses on the amount of funding available and the magnitude of difference between Europe and the US. However, this might be an incomplete way to look at the picture. What if there are smarter ways to be independent and competitive, even with a smaller budget?

The Software Defined Space Conference 2022 was the second conference in the series launched in 2021, earlier with the name Cyber and Space Security Conference. The second edition took place on the 26-27 October 2022 in Tallinn, Estonia. The conference was initiated by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication for Estonia and co-organised together with the Estonian Space Office to create a vibrant community for space cyber security.

Spaceflight is undergoing revolutionary changes, and the net effect is that the sustainability of our orbit is at risk. The growing quantity of space debris located in economically and scientifically crucial orbits poses a serious hazard to functioning satellites.

The coming of the end of the ISS era brings forward a series of fundamental questions: what will happen after the ISS is discontinued? Is a new epoch of privately-owned, low orbit on the rise?

On the heels of Israel’s purported announcement of the development of its “space administration” Space Force, one cannot help but wonder if the emergence of Space Forces is yet another affront to the provisions of the legal framework that governs outer space.

The first annual conference of the Swiss Space Law Forum, titled “Space Law: Key Principles and Swiss Perspectives”, took place at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law on the campus of University of Lausanne on 4 November 2022.

The Space Hackathon 2.0 was a student challenge organized by Leanspace, a newspace company building the digital infrastructure of the space industry,  during the annual Space Tech Expo Europe, held in Bremen on November the 15th and 16th 2022.