Opinion

by Paul Liias Today the Space sector is growing faster than ever before and it opens up new opportunities and avenues for new players. To leverage these global developments, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia has created a new Estonian Space Policy and Program, for the period …

By Talal Al Kaissi How things began, and where they are now: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has long looked to space as a domain we would like to make a meaningful contribution to for a variety of reasons. A meeting between our late founder and President Sheikh Zayed with the Apollo …

by Hamza Hameed and Brendan Rosseau On 30 May 2020, two American astronauts made history by taking part in the first crewed orbital flight ever operated by a private commercial launch service provider. The SpaceX Demo-2 launch marked an important moment in the development of a private space launch industry …

by Steven Freeland and Francois Lambert Later this month, on 26 June, a flurry of companies will make their final bids to acquire OneWeb, Greg Wyler’s prised space start-up. The winning bidder could be a private company, perhaps backed by a major space power. Whoever is successful will have the opportunity …

By Ronald van der Breggen Our industry is sometimes difficult to understand. OneWeb recently filed for bankruptcy, letting go of most of its staff, but then only a couple of days later they filed for an expansion of their fleet to 48,000 satellites. Huh? They started in 2015 announcing 1,600 …

By Ken Hodgkins The COVID 19 pandemic has ripped apart all sectors of the world’s societal fabric and rendered economies to a state of paralysis. Multilateral space diplomacy has not been immune to this chaos. This year for the first time the Legal Subcommittee of the UN Committee on the …

By Dr. Deganit Paikowsky Last week, NASA released “The Artemis Accords: Principles for a Safe, Peaceful and Prosperous Future.” The aim of the Artemis program, according to NASA, is to “[L]and the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024, heralding in a new era for space …

By Jeff Krukin At the end of the first Terminator movie, a young boy says, “There’s a storm coming.”  This comes to mind for two reasons: First, in my talks both to and about NewSpace entrepreneurs, I sometimes refer to them as Terminators because, like that almost unstoppable menace in …

By Yoav Landsman in collaboration with Catrina Melograna We have much to gain by making the Moon humankind’s next destination. We can practice living and working on another world, operate autonomous machines from great distances, and utilize the natural local resources. It is a natural step on our way to …

By Yuka Koshino Japan’s establishment of the Space Domain Mission Unit, which is planned to become fully operational in 2023, reflects the country’s increasing reliance on space systems to meet its security needs. It could emerge as a key actor in the defence of space assets in the Indo-Pacific. In …