The latest announcement that China would send its first civilian astronaut into space has brought back the focus on China’s burgeoning space programme and its intentions. The shift from military to civilian space programme is being seen with a lot of suspicion by the global community. Experts do not rule out the possibility of intimate ties between the space program and the Pla saying that the dual-use nature of space technologies and the military’s involvement in some aspects of the space program was a matter of global concern.

The duel use technology refers to technologies that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. China’s space capabilities, such as satellite technology, can have both civilian and military applications, leading to concerns about the military applications of their space program. Also, there are concerns about China’s space program contributing to the militarization of space. China has been developing technologies and capabilities that can be used for space-based surveillance, intelligence gathering, and potentially offensive operations. This led to worries about an arms race in space and the destabilizing effects it could have on international relations.

China has proved its anti-satellite (Asat) capabilities in the past. In 2007, China conducted a test in which it destroyed one of its own satellites with a missile, creating a large amount of space debris. China had destroyed its own defunct satellites in 2019. In April 2021, China launched into orbit the first piece of a permanent space station using its most powerful rocket. Remnants from the rocket finally fell in the Indian Ocean after a 10-day descent. Such actions have raised concerns about the potential militarization of space and the risk it poses to other countries’ satellites.

China’s space program lacks transparency, making it difficult to assess its true intentions and capabilities. China has been less open compared to other space-faring nations in sharing information about its space program, leading to suspicions and concerns from the international community. China’s space activities, particularly its anti-satellite tests and the creation of space debris, have raised concerns about the long-term sustainability of space and adherence to international norms. Preserving the space environment and ensuring responsible behaviour in space are important for the global space community, and any actions that undermine these goals are a cause for concern.

China which wants to establish itself as the leading space power has collaborated with Russia for following reasons:

1) Technological Collaboration: Russia has a long and established history in space exploration, with significant expertise and experience in areas such as human
spaceflight, rocketry, and space station operations. By collaborating with Russia, China wants to take benefit from its technical knowledge, capabilities, and infrastructure, accelerating China’s own space program.

2) Access to Russian Technology: Russia possesses advanced space technologies and systems that could be valuable for China’s space ambitions. Collaborating with Russia allows China to gain access to technologies that it may not have developed or mastered yet, enabling faster progress in its space program.

3) Geopolitical Cooperation: China and Russia have been building closer diplomatic and economic ties over the years. Collaborating in the space sector can serve as a symbol of their strategic partnership and align their interests in countering perceived dominance by other space-faring nations, particularly the United States. It also enhances their collective influence in shaping international space policies.

4) International Recognition: Partnering with Russia helps enhance China’s international standing in the space community. Russia’s reputation and credibility in space exploration can lend legitimacy and recognition to China’s space program, especially as China seeks to establish itself as a leading space power.

5) Resource Sharing and Cost Reduction: Joint space missions and projects can enable resource sharing and cost reduction. By collaborating, both China and Russia can share the financial burden of ambitious space initiatives, leverage their respective resources, and achieve common goals more efficiently.

Both China and Russia have collaborated on several projects including joint missions, technology sharing and establishment of the China-Russia international lunar research station of ILRS. They have teamed up for a robotic mission to an asteroid in 2024. They are coordinating a series of lunar missions intended to build a permanent research base on the south pole of the moon by 2030.

Critics are concerned about China’s interest in partnering with Russia in the space programme. But NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently said that despite global tensions with Russia due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, NASA’s relationship with Russia’s cosmonauts is as strong as ever. He however added that he saw a lack of transparency from China’s space agency. China And yet, the difference in space relations could not be more stark, Nelson said. He pointed out that Russian cosmonauts operate the International Space Station side by side with NASA astronauts, and that they frequently trust each other with their lives. Nelson said that despite the war in Ukraine, NASA’s relationship with Russian’s space agency has not changed. China has faced criticism in the past from NASA for its handling of space debris after the remnants of a rocket plunged into the Indian Ocean in 2021.

L'articolo Shift from military to civilian reignites debate on China space programme proviene da InsideOver.

As Russia prepared for an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, commercial imaging satellites shined a light on their advancing troops and weaponry toward their shared border. This space-based, commercially-driven transparency provided clarity and helped to combat disinformation before the eventual unprovoked invasion.

Take this specific example: as President Putin declared that Russian units were returning to base on 17 February 2022, commercial satellites captured a newly constructed pontoon bridge that appeared overnight across the River Pripyat, a key river in Belarus less than four miles from the Ukrainian border. This bridge construction contradicted Putin’s claims and as reported by the media, was seen by Western intelligence and military officials as part of additional support infrastructure being put into place in advance of an invasion. 

At the outset of the invasion, Ukraine had no national space capability. But the availability of existing — and growing — commercial satellite services and advanced technology has drastically altered all nation’s access to space and thus modern day warfare. Ukrainian officials and civilians are able to communicate battlefield updates with peers around the globe, preventing the spread of false information and increasing the probability of allied support in favor of the Ukrainians. According to CNBC, “within days of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion – and following a request for satellite internet support via Twitter from Ukraine’s digital minister Mykhailo Federov – SpaceX began sending Starlink terminal kits to Ukraine and has since sent thousands.” Starlink has extended a critical communications lifeline to Ukrainian forces despite repeated Russian attempts to black out the country both with kinetic strikes and cyberattacks. Starlink satellites flying as low as 130 miles above the battle space beam down high-speed internet access, allowing front-line Ukrainian troops in the hotly contested east to communicate with a chain of command that stretches hundreds of miles. 

Federov also called on commercial satellite companies to share imagery and data directly with Ukraine. The US government contributed through information sharing. When preparations for the invasion began, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) “increased and accelerated several efforts that were underway commercially,” according to David Gauthier, director of commercial and business operations at NGA.  There is now a new hybrid relationship between government and commercial space-based capabilities.  A relationship that is mutually beneficial and is strengthened by its interdependence.

Now a year into the invasion, Russia’s continued unprovoked invasion of Ukraine sheds new light on the evolving state of warfare. The first rather obvious observation is that space is critical to the conduct of modern warfare, whether in terms of precision targeting with GPS-guided weapons, commercial communications or satellite surveillance. Further, the vast amount of commercial imagery collected has created a battle space in Ukraine that is one of the most transparent in history. Moreover, it now appears that Russia’s electronic warfare capability is not as good as we thought. Russian forces have a fearsome reputation when it comes to electronic warfare and they go out of their way to reinforce this narrative. At one point, the state-owned news agency Sputnik proclaimed Russian EW capabilities “render aircraft carriers useless.” That boast seems to be much more for show than for substance. Even the handful of attempts to disrupt the StarLink network have not amounted to much.  However, we should not assume that Russia has used its full arsenal of electronic warfare options.

More ominously, Russia continues its trend of making provocative statements about the international order in space. As the US and the west continues to leverage more commercial satellites for intelligence and communications work, Russia has issued a warning that these may become a “legitimate target” for wartime operations.

The war in Ukraine has taught us that a nation does not need to own satellites or have a strong space program to participate and thrive in modern wars. The ‘fog of war’ will always exist for combatants on the ground, but new factual data sources collected from space can help illuminate, clarify, and level the information playing field and benefit citizens, businesses, humanitarian actors, or military and intelligence officials who seek greater visibility into activities happening around the globe. No longer are governments the sole arbiter of what citizens know. This light can expose the misinformation and misdeeds of nefarious actors, creating more informed and participatory responses by the media, humanitarian organizations and global citizens. 

As the old saying goes, sunlight is the best disinfectant for democracies. The free world has a distinct advantage given the advanced capabilities of the commercial imagery ecosystem to provide that sunlight and shepherd in a new era of shared awareness. We must leverage that advantage to illuminate and expose nefarious actions and actors. This perspective can lead to greater awareness on the road to shared truth, strengthening respect for individual liberty and collective security. Given that truth is on the side of justice, it is incumbent to provide the global public with the information they demand and the insight they deserve. 

L'articolo Intelligence, transparency, communications: the role of satellites in the Ukraine War proviene da InsideOver.

From the amount of money flocking to space, you’d think Apple and Facebook had just found millions of potential customers living phoneless and friendless on the far side of the moon.

To be sure, it’s been a breakthrough couple of years for human spaceflight. A record-shattering two dozen private citizens flew on commercial spaceships in 2021 with billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson leading the way. And NASA, which now buys rides from SpaceX, expects to decommission the International Space Station a decade from now and rent accommodations on commercial stations it is encouraging the private sector to build as the United States and China set their sights on lunar outposts.

For now, however, human spaceflight remains a high-profile but rather small piece of the global space economy.

And yet investors are taking a shine to space like never before, pumping billions into new ventures in recent years. Part of the reason, no doubt, is the crazy money “sloshing around in start-up land right now,” as The New York Times recently put it. Hardly a day passes without one space venture or another closing of a new round of funding or announcing plans to go public via the fast-track IPOs that have been all the rage during the pandemic.

Of the roughly $40 billion pumped into space startups during the first two decades of the 21st century, all but a third was invested since 2015, according to industry analysts BryceTech.

Some $7.6 billion in financing flowed into space startups in 2020, with more than 120 new companies receiving investment. In 2021, nine space companies — from launch startup Astra to commercial weather satellite operator Spire Global — raised hundreds of millions by merging with so-called blank-check companies that exist to find a promising business to buy.

“The space sector is 10 times more robust than in 2015 in terms of the quality of entrepreneurs, the quality of ideas, the quality of customers,” Ubiquity Ventures managing partner Sunil Nagaraj recently explained. “On an absolute basis, there are more great startups at every stage than there were five or seven years ago, but there’s also more bad space startups.”

Space is a roughly $400 billion global industry that investment bank Morgan Stanley expects will reach $1 trillion annually by 2040. While that’s a lot of rocket fuel, the entire space industry generates less in annual revenue than e-commerce giant Amazon, which rang up more than $450 billion in sales in 2021 (a reason Bezos can afford to put a fresh $1 billion into his Blue Origin space company each year).

Commercial space is having a moment, and excitement over moon shots and space tourism are partly why. But to appreciate one of the more transformative space trends, consider the smartphone. This everyday essential first took center stage with Steve Job’s 2007 introduction of the iPhone.

Pocket Change

Four decades after Apollo 11 landed on the moon with less computing power than that first-generation iPhone, NASA scientists Chris Boshuizen and Will Marshall built a tiny satellite out of a $300 store-bought smartphone. Packing a Google Nexus One and extra batteries into a satellite frame twice the size of a Rubik’s Cube, the pair managed to fly what Boshuizen recently described as “the most capable unclassified satellite in orbit at that time.”

“It had the fastest CPU. It had the most memory. It had the most storage. It had an 8-megapixel camera, albeit with a tiny, tiny lens.”

Boshuizen and Marshall soon left NASA to found Planet Labs, a company currently flying the world’s largest fleet of tiny Earth-observation satellites. The cameras and lenses are bigger and better, but the CPUs and memory are still the same commercial-grade silicon that smartphone makers order by the truckload.

“By anchoring ourselves in commercial supply chains instead of space-qualified legacy components, we can upgrade very, very quickly,” Boshuizen explained in 2014, right around the time the company’s first 28 satellites launched (Planet now has hundreds).

Embracing the commercial supply chain was an innovative approach for an aerospace industry accustomed to government contracts and unfazed by space-qualified electronics costing as much as modern automobiles packed with similar components.

Planet did not invent the smallsat or pioneer the use of off-the-shelf parts. However, their success led the way for dozens of companies now using smallsats to perform jobs that once required much bigger, more expensive satellites.

The early killer application for smallsats, besides test-flying new technologies, has been Earth observation. While bigger satellites take better photos, smallsats like Planet’s — by flying in greater numbers — often have the advantage of being in the right place at the right time; not always the most detailed images available, but often the freshest. This strength-in-numbers approach is likewise useful for real-time weather updates and picking up tracking signals emitted by ships and airplanes. And as satellites and their ground systems continue to get smarter, they are evolving from mere eyes and ears in the sky to powerful data-analytics platforms (the direction Planet is heading with funding from 2021’s IPO).

While Earth observation has come a long way in the days since it ceased being a solely government endeavor, it still accounts for just 5 percent of the global space market, according to recent figures from Paris-based Euroconsult.  The big money has always been in telecommunications.

Sending Signals

Sixty years after the U.S.-European Telstar satellites transmitted the first TV signals and telephone calls around the globe, telecom remains the cornerstone of commercial space. In fact, satellite telecom, along with the government-led satellite navigation sector, account for nearly 90 percent of the global space market.

Most of today’s satcom revenue is generated by big satellites parked high above the equator in so-called geostationary orbits. While they’re ideal for the wholesale movement of digital signals to and from telecom distribution centers, and have had a good run as direct-broadcast television and radio services, they are less suited for providing direct connection to a proliferating population of internet-connected devices.

Satellite broadband, in particularly, has long been a homeowner’s internet service of last resort — slower and more expensive than terrestrial offerings. Satellite megaconstellations comprising hundreds or thousands of smallsats aim to change that equation.

SpaceX, whose not-to-be-overlooked disruption of the global launch market has aided and abetted the smallsat sector and broader commercialization trends, has built and launched more than 2,000 Starlink broadband satellites since 2019 with thousands more to come. And they are not alone. London-based OneWeb has launched more than half its planned 650-satellite broadband constellation, and many other ventures — ranging from Amazon to China’s state-sponsored projects — are getting ready to deploy thousands of their own. PwC France forecasts that megaconstellations will provide the lion’s share of the world’s satellite capacity by 2024.

These trends explain why nearly 95 percent of the nearly 1,850 spacecraft launched worldwide in 2021 were smallsats, a category that includes everything from 1-kilogram picosats to half-ton microsats. Starlink and OneWeb, whose satellites fall in the middle of that mass range, accounted for 75 percent of all smallsats launched in 2021.

SpaceX (not so coincidentally) also led the way in overall launches in 2021, setting a personal best with 31 in year that saw an all-time-record 134 total successful launches worldwide.

If commercial space is suddenly blazing a bright trail across the night sky, the countdown to liftoff began years ago. Count on more and more satellites to keep going up as the barriers to entry continue to fall. As Boshuizen, one of the 26 rich guys and VIPs who went to space in 2021, recently told a Silicon Valley smallsat conference: “Anyone here could more or less take out a mortgage on their home and launch their own cubesat program with their children, which is a radically different point in time than where we were 10 years ago.”

Whether that’s a good thing is another matter.

Brian Berger is the editor-in-chief of SpaceNews, a U.S.-based publication covering the business and politics of space since 1989. Berger joined SpaceNews in 1998 as lead NASA reporter.

L'articolo How new satellites are conquering Space proviene da InsideOver.

In the mid-17th century, the Europeans laid the foundations of international law on sea trade based on the so-called “natural law” or “res communis”. Within the book Mare Liberum, a classic text in the history of international relations, the innovative principle that the sea was international territory and that all nations were free to trade through sea routes, was definitively proclaimed.

This principle of the “freedom of the seas” had undoubtedly a double target: the first, to allow free trade, and the second to give an ideological justification for the breaking of some commercial monopolies among the Dutch, British and Spaniard fleets which fought against each other for dominance over world trade.

Since then, there were disputes and no international regulations regarding maritime domination, and coastal states applied the principle that the sea was an “extension of the mainland”, but in the 18th century the principle was established that dominion over water was limited to an area defensible by an artillery cannon on the mainland, and later this rule became universally adopted in the so-called “three-mile limit”.

Today many observers make the comparison between Space – a place by its nature unlimited and for the moment militarily indefensible – and oceans as a natural and normative term to inspire a regulation for the exploration of Outer Space.

The basic law regarding Space is the ONU Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was heavily dictated by the res communis doctrine, stating that Space belongs to mankind and not to one individual or country. A noble principle which resulted to be out of the evolving political and economic context. Furthermore, it resulted to be unarmed before the technology innovations as well as the evolution of the socio-political global context.

Finally, this Treaty appears to be far from being a real safeguard.

In fact, in the 21st century the orbits around the Earth are being populated by an increasing number of satellites and spaceships, many for commercial purposes but most for military and intelligence purposes, as the global military and economic confrontation recurs from the seas of the planet to the oceans of the Universe.

The United States and China have started a new Space Race where the Moon, and the cislunar orbit, represents a strategic target rather than an operational one.

Modern states have always regulated their relations on the basis of rigidly drawn boundaries, and when this was not possible, diplomatic activity was often followed by military activity, as basically taught by the above-mentioned “natural law”.

But, is it possible to trace a “limes” in Space?

Obviously, this does not seem possible, as spaceships benefit of the absence of overflight sovereignty. A satellite can be put into orbit at different altitudes and fly over the whole world, curiously, some areas, parts of the spatial limes around the earth namely the geostationary orbits, are instead formally regulated.

So today there is a hybrid regulatory framework only for some type of orbits, but nothing for the case beyond the geostationary sphere, towards distant space or cislunar, where there is no international norm.

Earth’s orbits are dramatically populating tens of thousands of satellites and soon we will find ourselves in a situation comparable to a real stellar invasion. That would be comparable as if two centuries ago, a souverain state had suddenly found thousands of enemy vessels off its shores.

A part the absence of an international law there is the risk of eco-sustainability, something which seems distant but in reality, it is not. Satellites in orbit collide – sometime by chance and sometime on purpose – and pollute at different levels, producing an unimaginable volume of debris. Furthermore, there is another risk, linked to the global commercial pervasiveness of the new private corporations aiming at a terrestrial global profit by developing any sort of new space systems in absence of regulation and trade norm.

It would be necessary to immediately address the issue of applicable regulation and not wait to do so only following a critical event arises in terms of space eco-sustainability or space economy.

The current doctrine of international space law is unarmed and for a real progress the Outer Space Treaty should be rethought in terms of the realities of today.

Easy to say, harder to do.

It should be created an international Forum – and the EU should engage on that to stand as a global player – to involve legal think tanks to lay the foundation for the new era in international space law.

The idea to amend the Outer Space Treaty appears difficult as among the signatories there is no wide consensus, so the real option is to begin to shape within a selected nucleus of countries – EU, US, UK, Canada, Japan and Australia – a common space policy and regulation linked to the mutual cooperation agreement on security and defense in space. This should provide a platform to begin to reshape international space law by evolving into multilateral agreements with other countries.

The idea is that, over time, multilateral agreements born of domestic space policies would eventually reshape the thinking of international space law and either make the Outer Space Treaty redundant or encourage the international community to either rethink or redefine the res communis doctrine.

The nucleus of countries defined above Is not by chance, as it reflects the turmoil following the war in Ukraine. As Geopolitics is the analysis of the geographic influences on power relationships in international relations, it is clear that Space is now a eso-geographical element to be carefully taken into account, and so the countries which share common values are forced to look for a convergence.

Any delay to move in this direction should be pondered by thinking that an armed conflict happening in Space is going to be a reality quite soon.

L'articolo The Geopolitics of Space Exploration after the Ukraine war proviene da InsideOver.

The Apollo program was the peak of the Space race, with over 400,000 engineers and scientists working for 11 years to make 12 astronauts land on the Moon. But the program ended in 1972 and many things have changed since then.

Now, our smartphones have 1 million more times the memory and speed than the computers NASA used to land those 12 astronauts on the Moon. Those old computers not only cost $3.5 million each but were also the size of a car. Back in 1972, there were only 187 satellites in orbit, now there are more than 4,000. This connectivity has enabled the development of mobile applications. Thousands of the most popular apps contain location-sharing codes like Facebook, Whatsapp, Uber, Google Maps, Weather apps, and Tripadvisor just to mention a few.

But the most significant change is that Space is now open for business. It’s hard to know exactly when the transition from scientific to commercial activities in Space started, but there are two important events that I believe are significant in the history of modern Space.

The first event was the creation of the American company MirCorp in 2000 by a group of Space enthusiasts disappointed with the cancellation of the Apollo program by Richard Nixon. The company’s mission was to rent the Russian MIR Space Station to send private astronauts using the Russian rockets called Soyuz.

At that time the MIR Space Station was inhabited for many months so MirCorp paid two Russian cosmonauts to do repair work on the station and leave it ready for its first customer, entrepreneur Dennis Tito. Unfortunately, according to MirCorp “additional financing was not forthcoming from the original investors. The political pressure against the project from NASA was both private and public, and the decision was made to end the project”. So in 2001 the MIR Space Station was de-orbited and crashed in the Pacific Ocean. MirCorp’s journey is well captured in the documentary “Orphans of Apollo”.

Although MirCorp was not able to fulfill its mission, it opened a new window of commercial and marketing possibilities using Space infrastructure. This became a precedent for projects undertaken today. For example, the company Space Entertainment Enterprise is currently working with Tom Cruise to build a film studio in space by 2024.

The second event that significantly opened Space for business, was the creation of the Falcon rockets by SpaceX, with the support of NASA’s Commercial Program, which aimed to reduce costs by contracting private companies to access Space, instead of NASA building and operating their rockets

But SpaceX’s success was preceded by “the sheer force of blood and sweat” as some employees remember. In early August of 2008, Elon Musk had three consecutive failed launches, a $100 million personal investment running out, and a company that was the target of public undermining by the most powerful AeroSpace contractors who were protecting their multi-billion dollar interests.

But just 7 weeks after the third failed launch, SpaceX manufactured, integrated, and successfully launched the Falcon1, which was not only the cheapest rocket but also the most sustainable and reliable. To make a comparison, the cost per kilo using the Space Shuttle in 1990 was $65,000, nowadays it is as low as $1,500 per kilo using the Falcon Heavy.

The Space industry today is a collaborative and interdisciplinary field full of business and professional opportunities. Although engineers are still doing most of the heavy lifting, the Industry needs entrepreneurs, farmers, lawyers, doctors, architects, chefs, artists, communicators, and more, to take Space to the next level.

If we want to permanently establish a human presence outside of our planet, we need to replicate at least some of our basic activities. This means we would need architects to design sustainable habitats on the Moon or Mars, and to extend our presence in Space we would need doctors and biologists to study the effects of reproduction in microgravity.

To establish the rules for harmonious coexistence in Space, we would need lawyers who help us establish those rules, not only for social interaction but also for business exchanges. We would need food scientists and chefs to grow and prepare food in Space, nutritionists to come up with the optimal diet for our survival with limited resources. And of course, we would also need art and entertainment, among many other things.

The future is getting closer. Space is now open for business and it needs your skills to decide where we want to go next.

L'articolo A Gold Race in the XXI century? Space is open for business proviene da InsideOver.

In his Address to Congress last April, President Biden issued a call to action to deliver on the promise of democracy.  “Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart?  America’s adversaries – the autocrats of the world – are betting it can’t.”

As we consider this global call to action, we should look no further than one of liberal democracies strongest players – the commercial geospatial industry.  With a mix of entrepreneurial spirit, risk capital, and enlightened policy, this sector is ready, willing and able to contribute to the global transparency that advances our common cause by creating coherence from chaos, and separating fact from fiction.  The data generated from satellite imaging technology provides the visibility that helps us partner as allies and combat disinformation.  In other words, geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) can identify and see through the obfuscation.

Commercial imaging companies openly capture images that can be leveraged strategically to shed light on complex geopolitical events.  This light can inform a public narrative that supports our interests and exposes the misinformFor example, in mid-2020, the location of detained Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Western China became increasingly difficult to find.  The Chinese mapping platform Baidu Maps previewed blank reference map tiles over the areas in question, ultimately masking the reality.  Investigative journalists at Buzzfeed turned to commercial satellite imagery from Planet to uncover thousands of prisons and internment camps in the region, exposing China’s false narrative.

Technology now enables a near-continual sensing of all of the world’s activity.  Such a holistic collection will enable a detailed model of the planet and all that is happening on it.  There are many benefits of such a model including increased agricultural yields, strengthened supply chains, enhanced natural disaster preparedness and response, accurate measurements of the environment, and real-time detection of nefarious actors.  However, such a world will demand a rethinking of privacy itself, requiring us to find the optimum balance between the benefits of this technology, their implications for our privacy, and the potential for misuse.

First, it’s important to know who is doing the collecting and what is done with the collected information.  In the past, the collectors were governments – for good and for bad – and the original driver for remote sensing technologies was national security.  However, with the recent increase in innovation and technological advances from both government and commercial sectors, the potential for transparency escalates exponentially, an attribute I find pertinent to our success as a liberal democracy in this technological age.

With this increase in imagery and data collection, we will be able to cross-connect data streams from human activity to physical reality; ultimately answering the questions, “Where are the people?” “Why are the people there?” and “Where are they going to be tomorrow?”  Clearly, there are good and bad uses of the answers to these questions.

Properly thought through, an era of radical transparency can lead to a healthier planet and a more humane world.  However, achieving such a world means also striking a balance between access and control, openness and privacy, and good and evil.  As the expansion and growth of such surveillance is likely inevitable and incessant, we must calculate a means to deal with such a reality.  If approached with caution and aforethought, this will benefit our society exponentially.

Anticipating the ways this radical transparency might be misused is the most likely solution for establishing regulations that will encourage the good and thwart the bad.  We must first determine who controls our data, who can access it, why it can be accessed, and with what oversight.  We also need to firmly establish what role the derived data would play in our legal framework.  We ultimately need to answer the question, “How might our society adapt, innovate and evolve to harness the power of geospatial data and technology while mitigating its ethical challenges?”

As we seek to address that question, I suggest we all take a heavy dose of humility as these are unchartered waters and precipitous actions could have deleterious effects.  It is essential this situation is addressed with deliberate and well thought out actions, as well as the flexibility and ability to modify rules and regulations as we better understand the ramifications and consequences of our decisions.  I would observe that until we can agree on data privacy norms, it will be hard to create lasting rules around transparency.  The stakes are enormous.  In fact, one could see this discussion and debate as existential, especially as it pertains to human freedoms.

Our transparent society is here to stay, no matter how hard one tries to eliminate their digital presence.  If you think of this transparency as light – as I do – it shines both ways.  I believe transparency is good for liberal, democratic societies.  As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis observed, “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.”  I further believe the bedrock of civil discourse is trust; not so we agree on every issue, rather, but so we appreciate the other perspective and empathize with differing views.  I posit that transparency favors justice – and that evil lurks in the dark.

Thus, we should be considering our society’s core strengths – entrepreneurial spirit, risk capital, market competition and respect for the individual and their rights – as we rethink what the notion of privacy should mean today.  If we anticipate many of the ways that the abundance of data might be misused, we can establish rules, regulations, and governing authorities to encourage the best uses while thwarting bad actors.  If approached with thought and caution, this technology has the potential to make transparency a force for good and change the world for the better.

President Biden concluded his April State of the Union speech by acknowledging that our democratic form of government was being tested and challenged as never before — especially by regimes with very different social compacts.  A transparent world reduces confusion and increases shared awareness and trust.  It is in that world that I see democracies innovating, competing and winning.

L'articolo The perils of “transparency”: welcome to tomorrow’s world proviene da InsideOver.

Space is booming. In the next 10 years, we will witness the construction and launching of several private space stations that will host private astronauts and allow space tourism. We will also establish a permanent human presence on the moon where we’ll be able to extract subterranean iced water and turn it into oxygen and hydrogen. And just before 2030, we will greatly increase our connectivity, guidance, and observation capabilities, thanks to the 17,000 new satellites to be launched.

But this flourishment in Space is not new. Almost 60 years ago, the Russians achieved extraordinary accomplishments in only 8 years, from launching the first satellite in 1957 to the first “spacewalk” performed by cosmonaut Alexi Leonov in 1965, including sending the first man and woman into space (Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova).

Parallel to that, the Americans launched the Apollo program, which allowed Neil Armstrong to become in 1969 the first person to step on the surface of the moon, inspiring a whole generation and unleashing new technological developments that benefited life here on earth. Some of those space inventions are so well integrated into our daily routine that we might not even know they came from the space race.

Cordless vacuums, memory foam mattresses, invincible braces, infrared ear thermometers, treadmills, scratch-resistant glasses, water filters, and insulation materials are just some of those examples. However, the most memorable and impactful invention that came out of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created by Eric Fossum and Sabrina Kemeny when they were looking for efficient image sensors that can capture images during space missions and invented the miniature digital camera, an invention that influenced the XXI Century, allowing the creation of the cellphone camera and social media as we know it today, and it also revolutionized the automotive, surveillance and medical fields.

Speaking of the medical field, CATScan and MIR machines also use components, originally intended for Space missions, even enriched baby formula was discovered when NASA-funded researchers were working on developing life support for Mars missions and found the Omega-3 protein, which is a key ingredient that has been added since to more than 90 percent of baby formula on the market today.

Besides those tangible inventions, Space provides us with communication and data services thanks to the over 3,000 satellites in orbit, that help us to get accurate weather predictions for navigation and agriculture, stay connected, use our credit card and banking apps anywhere in the world, coordinate search and rescue missions in zones of disasters and track climate change, among many other applications.

One of the less known uses of spatial data is helping engineers prevent accidents by performing structural analysis of large objects from Space. By overlapping images of bridges, buildings, roads, and other large constructions, engineers can measure displacements or damages and intervene on time.

Even governments are using satellite information in new ways. In France for example, the region of Alpes-Maritimes partnered up with Google Maps to locate undeclared swimming pools from space, and collect the appropriate tax. In California, the government also uses images from satellites to identify and close illegal marijuana grow sites.

We live in a very exciting time where the moon and mars exploration will create a new wave of discoveries, being the most promising in the field of health-tech, with anti-aging serums that protect and regenerate our skin from the harsh space environment, telemedicine machines that can perform complex surgery in outer space, and bioengineering products that keep us alive for a longer time with minimum resources.

But with all this progress, we need to be very conscious of preserving our space environment and the risk of polluting our orbits with space debris and mega-constellations. Thankfully there are already some initiatives that aim to reutilize satellites to extend their life and find environmentally friendly propellants and materials.

One of those initiatives was led by the American company Northrop Grumman when last year they became the first institution in the world to successfully dock two satellites in orbit, providing a 5-year life extension to a communications satellite that was at the end of its operational life.

Another example of sustainability in the space sector comes from the Kyoto University in Japan, as they announced that in 2023 they will be launching the first satellite made partially of wood, which will become the most environmentally friendly satellite that will burn upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere after the end of its life, leaving little to no environmental trace.

Exploration is in our DNA, it has not only been our survival skill but also the way we acquire knowledge. Our ancestors started exploring the earth 100,000 years ago and we should look forward to the benefits of exploring outer space in the upcoming years.

L'articolo The importance of Space in our daily life proviene da InsideOver.

Russia and China recently agreed to jointly build and manage a research station on the Moon. This world-overturning event should exert an eye-opening effect on the West, whose perceptions about the actual strength and potential of the Russo-Chinese axis are often misleadingly oriented to make downward forecasts and estimates.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the countries’ space agencies is inherently epoch-making and it is the ultimate manifestation of the two rivals-turned-allies’ will to put apart short-term interests and diffidence for a superior goal – the mutual well-being – in the awareness that their dreams of unipolarity-killing grandeur cannot become true by pursuing isolationist policies. They must cooperate, whenever and wherever required, and they must make the effort to trust each other. Not easy, but not impossible – and the number of initiatives and projects carried out together in the last seven years is the self-proving evidence of the blind faith placed in what we could name the “historical effort”.

Thanks to the priceless support provided by China, Russia managed to circumvent the Ukraine-related sanctions regime and to help its allies – from Belarus to Venezuela – overcome the pandemic and economic turmoil. Because the Dragon has the money, a lot of money to invest, whereas the Bear has both the will and the instruments to challenge the unipolar order and to make it more Asian-centered.

Together, they could rule over Eurasia via their perfectly complementary Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiative. And together, combining the Chinese money with the Russian space-related expertise, they could now get to literally universalize their partnership, converting the 21st century’s Entente Cordiale into the first-ever Entente Spatiale.

The Project

The MoU has been signed on March 9 by Russia’s and China’s space agencies, respectively Roscosmos and China National Space Administration (CNSA), and eyes cooperation in the establishment of a permanent lunar base. Actually, the news is no news for those who have been following the evolution of the Russo-Chinese space partnership and we forecasted the signing of the MoU shortly afterwards the Artemis Accords.

Indeed, we had written that the Artemis Accords, as they were conceived, could speed up the already-ongoing “space decoupling” between the West and the East in the light of and as a result of the exclusion of Moscow and Beijing from Trump’s grand strategy for the conquest of space. More in detail, we forecasted that the Western alliance for space would encourage Moscow to take seriously Beijing’s proposal to build a lunar base together; a project that was of no interest to the Kremlin until last October.

The Artemis Accords have changed everything and they proved fundamental in convincing Russia to abandon mistrust and to accept China’s undoubtedly tempting and win-win offer. According to the text, made available on the CNSA’s website, the two signatories are going to construct an “International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) […] on the lunar surface and/or on the lunar orbit that will carry out multi-disciplinary and multi-objective scientific research activities such as the lunar exploration and utilization, lunar-based observation, basic scientific experiment and technical verification”.

The overall project is described as “a comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation” whose construction is set to be the result of Russia’s and China’s “close collaboration on planning, demonstration, design, development, implementation and operation of the ILRS”. In short, or written otherwise, the signatories are going “to use their experience in space science, R&D and use of space equipment and technology to jointly formulate a road map for the construction of the ILRS”.

The MoU is the perfectly calibrated response of Moscow and Beijing to the exclusion from the Artemis Accords and, if everything goes as agreed, it might be fully operational (and livable) by the late 2030s or the mid-2040s.

The repercussions

The mere fact that the MoU should have been signed at the Saint Petersburg’s Global Space Exploration Conference, programmed for June 2021, but eventually it has been signed three months in advance and with no previous announcement – in order to generate a “surprise effect” in public opinion – is verily eloquent. It says something about the (optimal) health status of the Russo-Chinese partnership and it speaks loud about its (bright) future.

Again, it has been the West’s strategic myopia to galvanize the strengthening of the Russo-Chinese axis and to provide it with the necessary lifeblood to expand further. As Barack Obama failed to forecast Euromaidan’s long-term consequences – forgetting Zbigniew Brzezinski’s warnings about the inherent risks tied to the geopolitical ambition to oust Russia from Europe – Donald Trump failed to understand that excluding Russia from the alliance for space would oblige it to resort to the only major power open to similar partnerships: China.

With the diffidence overcome in one of the few areas where Russia still felt a kind of mistrust and a sense of insecurity, the way is now fully paved for the elevation of the Entente Cordiale into the Entente Spatiale. The already-healthy partnership is likely to benefit from the history-making MoU in terms of cooperation extended to sensitive areas – from military to cyber-sphere – and of sharing of Moon-based strategic resources, and it could even lay the foundations for a new space era centered on Beijing and Moscow.

Indeed, until now we didn’t mention one of the most important lines of the MoU. The ILRS, far from being an exclusive dominion, is projected to be “open to all interested countries and international partners”. What does this mean? The lunar base – again, if ever constructed – could possibly be used by the consors imperii to host missions, instrumentation and even personnel from other countries interested in joining the space race. These countries, for obvious reasons, may belong to the Global South or to the developing world, although partnerships with the West are not to be ruled out, with their participation meaning the translation to space of the Russo-Chinese idea of multipolarity.

L'articolo Russia and China, From the Entente Cordiale to the Entente Spatiale proviene da InsideOver.

China’s robotic Chang’e-5 lunar exploration probe touched down on the Moon with the aim of collecting samples of rock and dust to bring back to Earth.

The mission has targeted Mons Rümker, a high volcanic complex in a nearside region referred to as Oceanus Procellarum.

The probe is expected to spend the next several days examining its surroundings and gathering up surface materials.

Chang’e-5 Will Help Scientists Learn More About the Moon

The intention is to package approximately 2kg of regolith (soil) to send up to an orbiting vehicle that can deliver the samples back to Earth, which can help scientists learn more about the Moon’s origins, formation and volcanic activity on its surface, according to the Guardian. 

However, there is more behind China’s space mission than just analyzing samples of regolith. This is Beijing’s opportunity to become a space superpower, alongside Russia and the US.

Chinese President Xi Jinping hopes to operate a permanent space station called Tiangong (heavenly place) – planned for as early as 2022, and he also wants to send astronauts to the Moon.

This is not the first time that China has sent a prototype to space. The first, Tiangong-1, was launched in 2011, and completed its mission before Beijing lost control of the craft and it crashed into the ocean in 2018. A space laboratory called Tiangong-2 was launched in 2016 and made a re-entry in 2019.

Chang’e-5 requires one lunar day to complete its mission, the equivalent of 14 days on Earth, so that it does not have to withstand too many of the Moon’s extreme overnight temperatures.

China is Serious About Becoming a Space Power

There are no guarantees that the mission will be successful. The Guardian reports that Clive Neal, a geoscientist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said that the lander could crash, or the samples could fall out as it moves. It also still has to make the journey back to Earth and land smoothly in inner Mongolia later this month. Even if it did crash, such a disaster is unlikely to deter China from its mission of competing with Russia and the US in the “space race,” as proven by the fact that Beijing has been carrying out these ventures since 2011.

China’s main intention behind its Chang’e-5 mission is to beat the US, and there are many reasons why Washington should be concerned about this. Dr. Malcolm Davis, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, told the Daily Express that the Americans fear Beijing’s presence in cislunar space because they could deny the US access to it. He added that the Chinese are actively developing counter-space capabilities and anti-satellite weapons to impose their will upon others. Future American administrations really do need to pay attention to the space race, because if what Davis says is true, their space weaponry could pose a direct challenge to American national security.

America Can’t Afford to Lose the New Space Race

As university scientist John Bridges suggests, China is spending vast amounts of money on research spending. The country is close to achieving its aim of spending 2.5 percent of its GDP on research and development. This is closing the gap on the US, which spent 2.8 percent of its GDP on space research in 2018. He explained that the Chang’e-5 mission could pave the way for future collaborations like the successful US-Soviet Skylab space station link up in 1973-74, despite the growing hostilities between both countries back then. However, unless relations between Washington and Beijing improve post-COVID-19, that seems unlikely for now.

Though the scientific discoveries that the Chang’e-5 mission should hopefully uncover about the Moon will no doubt be fascinating, there is more to this venture than meets the eye. The US cannot afford to take its eye off China’s expansion into space as the latter hopes to be a comprehensive space power by 2049.

L'articolo Why is China Sending a Probe to the Moon? proviene da InsideOver.

The US and the UK recently slammed Russia for testing its space-based anti-satellite weapons on July 15, a move that may spark an arms race among the world’s powerhouses in outer space.

War of Words: Russia vs. USA

Specifically, the US Outer Space Commander claimed it had evidence about Russia’s weapon testing, even though it was not destructive.

“US Space Command has evidence that Russia conducted a non-destructive test of a space-based anti-satellite weapon. Russia released this object in proximity to another Russian satellite, which is similar to on-orbit activity conducted by Russia in 2017, and inconsistent with the system’s stated mission as an inspector satellite,” military officials said.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry snubbed Washington’s and London’s allegations, arguing that such activity had complied with international law and did not pose a threat to any space objects.

What is an Anti-Satellite Weapon?

An anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) is a weapon designed explicitly to ruin a satellite for strategic military goals. So far, four countries have achieved possession of such a weapon: China, Russia, the US, and India—which tested its first ASAT missile in 2019.

The US conducted its first trial of ASAT weapon in 1959 when that type of technology was still rare. The US used the missile named Bold Orion, a recycled nuclear-powered ballistic missile.

The then-Soviet Union followed suit in 1960 and the 1970s when the missile reached the orbit and destroyed a satellite with explosive material.

The US tested another ASAT missile in 1985, launched from its F-15 fighter jet. In 2008, the US launched an ASAT test using the SM-3 rocket from a warship. 

In 2007, China entered the arms race by shooting its weather satellite. The mainland’s test was considered the most destructive, with over 3,000 pieces of debris produced during the activity. The object destroyed at that time was at the altitude of more than 300 kilometers.

China and Russia Pose a Space Threat to the US

The Pentagon last June released the latest report on a new space defense strategy to maintain its military excellence, adding that the US is facing challenges from Russia and China. The report came following China’s decision to postpone the BeiDou-3 satellite launch due to technical problems.

US President Donald Trump, in 2019, announced that outer space is a new war domain to boost global dominance. The POTUS signed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act to form Space Force in 2020, which is a branch of the US Air Force.

“It was nearly half a century from Kitty Hawk to the creation of the Air Force. And now it’s 50 years after Apollo 11 that we create the Space Force,” the real estate mogul said during the signing ceremonies in Maryland in December 2019.

Not the First Time Washington Has Accused Moscow of Similar Testing

In 2018, Russia tested the PL-19 Nudol missile, also called “the satellite killer.” The test was the eighth since 2014. The first two tests were considered to have failed before the six successful ones, Secure World Foundation’s Global Counterspace Report stated.

On April 15, Russia also conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT), designed to destroy a low Earth orbit satellite.

“Russia’s DA-ASAT test provides yet another example that the threats to US and allied space systems are real, serious and growing,” Space Force commander Gen. John “Jay” Raymond stated, cited in Space.

Such Tests Can Produce Space Debris

Those countries may claim that their tests will provide minimal space debris. For example, India’s anti-satellite weapon test in 2019 claimed to have created a minimum level of debris.

“Whatever debris generated will decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs’ statement said.

However, the astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell explained that the launch’s impact was more than just explosive materials.

The launched missile “doesn’t carry any explosive, but just puts itself in the path of the satellite. The satellite is traveling at 18,000 mph (29,000 km/h),” McDowell said. “The kinetic energy of that impact is much more than any high explosive you could carry, so no point in putting a bomb on it.” 

L'articolo Why Does the US Worry About Russia’s Anti-Satellite Weapons? proviene da InsideOver.