Space Sustainability: Growing Challenges & Emerging Opportunities

For decades, the space industry has been only accessible to a few spacefaring countries. Advances in electronics, Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components, and Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLVs), an effort led by Planet, SpaceX, Blue Origins, Virgin Galactic, and Sierra Nevada corporation, have opened up the space frontier to diverse groups of actors.

Nowadays, the space industry is not only governed by a few spacefaring nations, but also includes developing and emerging nations, academia, and the private sector. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of public-private partnerships, which is clearly evident in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). CLPS partners with commercial companies to deliver payloads to the Moon aboard commercial lunar landers. This was made possible through federal acquisition programs, grants, contracts, and Requests For Proposals (RFPs).

Most recently, the development of lunar technologies and capabilities to return the first US woman and the next US astronauts to the Moon to establish a permanent and sustainable human presence on the Moon and act as a testbed for Mars, and the growing number of satellite megaconstellations to provide broadband internet to everyone around the globe have raised many legal, technical, social, and economic questions. The realization of commercial benefits from orbital and lunar activities have also gained a lot of momentum and received billions of dollars in investments.

However, such development has intrigued space law experts because of potential violations of international treaties and regulations. On the other end of the spectrum, these satellites provide critical services to the downstream sector. From an engineering standpoint, one operator would need to deploy thousands, even tens of thousands of satellites, to provide global realtime coverage.

With the deployment of 775 Starlink satellites since the beginning of 2020, astronomers and space law experts have raised concerns about the threat that mega-constellations pose to ground-based astronomy and the safety, security, and sustainability of the space domain as a result of an increased probability of debris-generating collisions, which could trigger a chain of collision events known as a Kessler Syndrome and render orbit useless.

This may not just be an industry-wide problem, but also a proliferating planetary defense threat. The exploding demand for critical satellite services seen in the growth of location-based apps, IoT devices, and remote sensing applications and SDG indicators has resulted in an exponential growth in the number of satellites. While the total number of operational satellites was a little over 2,000 in 2019, SpaceX alone launched 775 satellites in 2020 so far and the total number of operational satellites could potentially grow from 2,000+ to reach 100,000+ by 2029, according to FCC filing data from CSSI and AGI.

While the proliferation of satellites and mega-constellations demonstrate the dynamics of the supply and demand in the space industry, they also signal serious and imminent threats to the safety, security, and sustainability of the space domain. This would lead policymakers to push for more stringent laws and regulations.

With the exponential increase in the number of satellites in orbit and the growing problems posed by space debris and space militarization threats, the need to invest in new markets, disciplines, and technologies to address these issues is growing. These include Space Situational Awareness (SSA), Space Traffic Management (STM), active orbital debris removal, and Satellite Servicing. It is assuring to see growing public and private investment trends in these areas. These are nascent markets with high potential and impact. Some examples of leading private sector players in these fields include LeoLabs, Orbitfab, Astroscale, Northrop Grumman, among others.

More recent policy discussions about orbital debris and Lunar exploration are creating opportunities for joint projects and international cooperation on the peaceful uses of outer space. A few good examples of soft law, unilateral, and bilateral instruments that build upon the multilateral Outer Space Treaty (OST) are IADC laws, recent US laws on space debris, Artemis Accords, MVA Principles, and the Luxembourg and US executive orders.

Amidst new hopes and fears; growing problems and emerging opportunities, it is up to us as an international community to stand up for space sustainability and push for a safer, peaceful, and more prosperous future for us all.

If we fail to ensure the safety, security, and sustainability of the space domain within this decade, this can have dire consequences on humanity, not only in space but also on Earth. If satellites are down, the global economy would come to a halt in a matter of hours and billions of lives around the globe relying on critical satellite services would be severely disrupted.

It is in the best interest of all parties to cross the aisle and make more responsible use of outer space and ensure the safety security, and sustainability of the space domain, for everyone’s sake.