The International Space Summit, to take place in Paris on Wednesday and Thursday, offers an opportunity for countries to shape a future with clearer and fairer rules for exploring and harnessing the vast potential of outer space.
A new understanding of outer space
In nearly seven decades, space has largely been reserved for government-led scientific research, governed by highly aspirational treaties and shaped by competition for technological and ideological supremacy, primarily between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Today, that landscape has fundamentally changed. Driven by breakthroughs in science and technology, space activities have shifted from symbolic scientific exploration of distant planets to activities with a direct impact on the economic and social lives of billions of people on earth.
Low earth orbit (LEO) has become an essential economic backbone and a new frontier for global commerce, with the players being nations and powerful private corporations. One of the clearest signs of this transformation is the growing number of government and commercial satellites crowding LEO. This transformation has presented the international community with a problem: space development is advancing so rapidly that it’s outpacing the global consensus needed to govern it. The foremost challenge is to science.
Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory, said: “There are projects to put about two million satellites into orbit. At present, there are only 15,000 satellites. It would be an enormous rise in the number of satellites. Each satellite leaves a streak of light when it passes through a telescope’s field of view. One streak is only a minor inconvenience, but when there are many of them, each streak blocks part of the image of the universe that we are trying to observe.”
Even greater challenges for humanity lie in the economic, security, and legal dimensions. With tens of thousands of satellites orbiting the earth, the risk of catastrophic high-speed collisions is rising. A single collision could generate thousands of uncontrolled fragments, raising fears of the so-called “Kessler syndrome” – a chain reaction of orbital collisions that could render critical areas of space unusable for generations.
Another major challenge is that countries are developing different, and sometimes conflicting, visions for space governance. These differences are growing with the ambitions of individual players, threatening international confrontation, which could damage outer space as a shared asset of humanity.
Searching for common rules
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty established the first legal foundation for addressing cluster satellites and exploitation of outer space resources. But a comprehensive update of the treaty, or even a new treaty, is needed as major powers form competing blocs rather than working toward common agreements.
The US-led Artemis Accords, signed by dozens of countries, are confronting the International Lunar Research Station, or ILRS led by China and Russia. Legal initiatives like the EU Space Act are viewed by big corporations outside Europe, particularly in the US, as protectionist burdens that could slow innovation. At the same time, countries are concerned about space technology created for scientific or commercial purposes being used as weapons.
All these factors have heightened expectations for the International Space Summit in Paris this week, which will center on four themes.
First, security and defense. Orbital infrastructures support communications, navigation, Earth observation, and other critical activities, but preserving a secure space environment is a condition for the continuity of civil and military operations.
Second, the space economy. The rise of satellite constellations, reusable launchers, data services, and downstream applications gives space a growing role in the competition between states and companies.
Third, international regulation. The Summit will examine the conditions for the collective, sustainable, responsible management of space as a common good.
Fourth, scientific research, the exploration of the universe, and inspiring younger generations.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said: “Dramatic advances in space mean that what happens there has implications for us all. Space assets already play a growing role in navigation, internet provision, and monitoring trends on Earth, from energy and climate to biodiversity and a host of other vital functions. Nearly 40% of the SDG targets rely on data from space.”
For the international community, the question is no longer whether space can be exploited, but what common rules should govern its use. If the international community fails to reconcile national security interests with environmental sustainability, the space that once promised to connect humanity and advance civilization could instead become gridlocked with geopolitical conflicts.
