The future of space: congested and contested

Transcript: Next Giant Leap, Episode 4: The future of space: congested and contested

SFX: Seven, six, five, four, stage engine start. Three, two, one. And lift off of Artemis 1.

SFX: This is the captain of... We rise together. Back to the moon and beyond.

Kevin Fong: Hi, I'm Kevin Fong, and this is Next Giant Leap, a special podcast series brought to you by GZERO Media in partnership with Canadian space company MDA.

SFX: It's one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind.

Kevin Fong: Space is a big place. But in this episode, we're going to consider the consequences of the boom in activity and the prospect of space becoming congested, contested and competitive. The number of satellites going into low-Earth orbit is rising at an astonishing rate, raising real fears of a cascade of collisions. To make matters worse, tests of anti-satellite weapons have showered still more debris into low-Earth orbit. China, the United States, India and Russia have all conducted the so-called ASAT tests over the last 15 years. So is space becoming a new theater of conflict? All of this sits alongside the increasingly fierce competition between countries and commercial companies for orbital real estate against the background of a less than fully formed system of international agreements to govern this new frontier. And then there's what promises to be the new space race. Within a few years, the world's two superpowers, the U.S.A. and China, will be competing to get people to the moon and exploit its resources. How on Earth or indeed in space can the world manage all of these tensions and threats so the new ocean of space is peaceful, safe and sustainable for all. To chew over the issues, we brought together a terrific panel of guests. Scott Pace is director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Scott has also held several senior space policy positions, not only at NASA but also in the White House. Tanja Masson-Zwaan is deputy director of the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University in the Netherlands and an internationally recognized authority on space governance. And Kevin Whale is senior director of defense strategy at MDA and previously director general for space in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Welcome all of you, to Next Giant Leap. Just to start so far, I'd like to ask you all a question, which is this: do you think there's a risk that space becomes a kind of Wild West in this this era of exploration, exploitation in a geopolitical sense or in any other sense? Let's, let's hear from Tanja on this one.

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Thank you, Kevin. That's an interesting question, and it's a term that I often use when discussing, for instance, the race for space resources, the potential exploitation of water on the moon, for instance. We have to avoid by all means that it becomes a Wild West and we have systems in place, we have regulations, laws, treaties that have been in place for the past 50 years. But we need more to govern and use this new potential frontier of space utilization, because the rules that we have are basic principles and do not go into the details. So there is a risk of a Wild West is my short answer.

Kevin Fong: Thank you. Scott, what do you think?

Scott Pace: It's a wonderful metaphor, but one of the things that I often say is the West was not quite as wild as people think and that in the U.S. there is always sovereignty, which is not the case in space. I do agree that there are a lot more details to be worked out and lots of communications that need to be done. But there already is quite an amount of law in space and there are new activities, however, which still need to be defined. So I don't really feel comfortable with the Wild West idea because I think it undersells the fact that there is in fact a lot of regulation already out there and that attempts to do more, if not done well, could infringe upon the lack of sovereignty and the freedom to use space that we've had to date.

Kevin Fong: And Kevin, what do you think? Wild West or not?

Kevin Whale: So I can agree with both of them, even though they are opposing views. I think it is in some senses yes, and in some senses no. So from a defense point of view, if I use the example of the different domains in land operations over thousands of years, those norms of behavior and laws are in conflict. We kind of work those out over that kind of time frame. Once we put to sea that was probably a couple hundred years before we got to the international law of the seas. Air power came along and then we did that over a couple of decades. Now you've got domains like cyber and space where we're having to work out how to apply the laws and the norms that exist or don't exist in almost real time. And that's really presenting a challenge. And to make it more complicated with space, until recently, there's only been a few humans in space. It's always been machines. So that creates a different application of laws sometimes. And the more humans that go into space, the more these norms and laws are going to be tested in real time.

Kevin Fong: Tanya, I wanted to come to you and ask you, when did we start laying down the law in space? And that's a relatively new thing, right? We haven't thought about the need for law in space until relatively recently. When was that?

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Well, actually not that recently, because right after Sputnik went up into outer space on the 4th of October, 1957, right after that, the United Nations came together and started to create a committee on the peaceful uses of outer space, which adopted resolutions. And we had the first treaty ready and entered into force in 1967. And that treaty today has 113 member states, and there are four more treaties, four other treaties. All of those were concluded in the 1960s and 70s.

Kevin Fong: And for those who aren't familiar with them, what are the core guiding principles of space law as set in that era?

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Well, it's a word that you're saying here, principles that is very applicable because the treaties do not go very much into detail, but they do set down, they lay down the principles of behavior of states in outer space. So this was after the Cold War where states wanted to cooperate. They wanted to preserve outer space for peaceful uses. They wanted to prohibit nuclear weapons in weapons of mass destruction. They wanted to lay down that states should assist each other, that they should not interfere with each other's activities, that no one could own outer space, and that outer space should be free for exploration and use by all being at the same time for the benefit and in the interests of all countries. So you see as all these very broad pen strokes of the behavior which have, however, led to 50 years of peaceful coexistence and cooperation in space.

Kevin Fong: And Scott, the law that we have today, how fit for purpose is it for the era we're finding ourselves entering massive proliferation of satellites and objects in low-Earth orbit, a race back to the moon with human presence? How fit for purpose is what we've got for where we're going?

Scott Pace: Well, I actually think it's quite fit, but there is a lots of details I think, that need to be worked out both within states and also between states. Now that we know more about space and we know more about resources and what's possible, both economic and security. And to me, very simplistically, there's really two tensions. One is, is the outer space treaty says space is the province of all mankind, meaning it's open to usage really by everybody. On the other hand, the principles say we should avoid harmful interference. And so the question is, how do we go about balancing those two imperatives open to everybody but avoid harmful interference? So I would say that the law is basically fine, and I'm less convinced of the need for brand new law. I am convinced of the need for more norms of behavior and more communications and really more thought by spacefaring states in discussions with each other as to what they're actually going to do, as opposed to trying to develop new principles. I think what we have is pretty good, but we need to figure out how we're going to implement them better.

Kevin Fong: And it's interesting you talk about specifics there, but you know, all the time I've grown up and looked at space. It was such a big place that you could do whatever you wanted and you wouldn't really interfere with anyone else. But more recently, we've seen that change. Particularly, I'm reminded of the specific case of anti-satellite tests and how that changes the landscape. Kevin, I wanted to come to you for that. Just tell us a little bit about why anti-satellite tests per say, what they are and why they might be problematic in this arena.

Kevin Whale: Yeah. So any satellite capabilities have been developed in various degrees. My understanding, since about the sixties off and on, the more recent ones, because of the congestion and concerns about debris, it's basically a missile that watches from the ground and hones in on a satellite and destroys it. Destroying anything kinetically in space, the problem is the debris that it creates and it's depending on the altitude, it can be up for days, months or in some cases years. So, you know, it's very, very disruptive, obviously, to high value assets that you put in space. You can understand why some nations have the desire to have those kind of capabilities, because they understand that for Western nations and others, space is really a strategic advantage and they want to remove that advantage. I will say, though, despite all the press that any satellite systems get, there's far greater threats through cyber. I mean, everything in space is a computer, and if you can hack into the network or you can jam the signal up and down signals pretty easily. But the anti-satellite systems, whether from the ground or in some cases, we believe there's some nations that are developing on-orbit capabilities. You know, if you messed up an orbit, you messed it up for yourself as well as for whoever you're trying to interfere with. So, they have some strategic effect, but they're not necessarily the only way to interfere with space capabilities.

Kevin Fong: Yeah, it's interesting. I kind of hadn't thought about that sort of element of the software is as important as the hardware, right? So I guess our conventional view of warfare is not so conventional here in that potent attack. So potentially software as opposed to hardware. That's an interesting point. And Tanja, I wanted to know something of the legality of these anti-satellite tests is it not like conventional weapons testing you do in your own country, in your own space, in your own backyard. There's a lot at stake for everybody up there. What is the legal position on testing an anti-satellite weapon in space?

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Yeah, unfortunately, if you look at it really technically, it is not something that is prohibited by law, although you can argue that it is not a peaceful use of outer space, obviously. The point is that these tests are conducted against the state's own satellites. So it's basically a state destroying its own satellites. And the consequence of creation of debris is, of course, very approachable and not at all desirable and could be seen as interfering with activities to other states. So you could probably argue that there is a violation of legal principles, but as such, the use of anti-satellite technology is not prohibited by law. We have seen since last year, several states that have issued unilateral declarations, starting with the United States and several others have followed suit. And the United Nations has even issued a resolution at the end of last year. So I think that there is a growing awareness that indeed, as Kevin also said, if you do this, you spoil it not only for others, but including for yourself.

Kevin Fong: So I want to stick with that theme, actually, and come back to Kevin, because we've seen in the past a proliferation of new types of weapon nuclear technologies which got to a stage where, you know, no one could win that sort of conflict globally. There is a version of this where you can end up with a sort of mutually assured satellite destruction scenario in which warfare in space deprives everyone of space. Is that a concern? Does anyone worry about that?

Kevin Whale: I think it actually goes deeper than that. And when you look at how satellites have become embedded in our very way of life. They're certainly strategically important to military operations, whether at home or abroad. The commercial, the mixing of dual use capabilities, I mean, it's become so embedded so insidiously over time that if we wreck space, it's almost only one step down from nuclear catastrophe because of what it's going to mean to all of us in the short and in the long term. So there definitely are some real deterrence, strategic risk issues that we all need to be worried about. If we mess up space, we messed it up for all of us, and that's going to affect our populations more than they realize.

Kevin Fong: I mean, it is an extremely fragile infrastructure. Scott, I wanted to come to you. You actually don't need to have bad actors to produce harmful space debris in space. It happens anyway. Tell me something about the other troubling sources of space debris we have ongoing today in today's space industry and activities.

Scott Pace: Well, actually, there's been, I think, a lot of progress in mitigating the creation of space debris. I mean, there is our U.N. Guidelines on mitigation. And what I mean by that is in the past, when we had rockets go up, they would basically shed parts and material pretty much willy nilly as they went up, and they were quite dirty. The Chinese, when they first came into the launching market, were quite dirty in terms of the amount of things that would be shed from the vehicle and just the satellites. And with a long period of time, there were international discussions at the U.N. and COPUOS technical meetings first and then more political ones to get acceptance about best practices for how industry should make sure their vehicles don't shed things that aren't necessary. And that's improved over time. And in fact, the Chinese vehicles became cleaner over time, approaching really Western standards, which is why their ASAT test in 2007 was kind of a surprise to us because we knew they knew about what some of the effects would be, and we knew they had people who could say that this would probably be a bad idea. And so it kind of left us with the impression that either their scientists and technical people were not listened to or consulted or they were willfully ignored, or there was an attempt to maybe intimidate other countries by demonstrating a destructive effect. But that led to a bit of an acceleration of other tests as other countries followed, the Russians, India also followed. If you look at the Cold War period, there were a lot of ideas and even some testing of things that we would consider space weapons and space-based weapons. But remarkably few of them were ever actually deployed. A lot of space weapons are really kind of useless and expensive. It's not the most attractive way to do things, but nonetheless, there's been this reemergence and re-interest, I think in space because of the dependencies that we have on it now. And so because of those dependencies, adversarial states such as Russia and China are looking to say how they might cut that advantage down a bit and therefore they're experimenting and pursuing some of these weapons systems, which, as I said, were certainly thought of during the Cold War, but ultimately never really deployed. Be nice to return to maybe that period in an odd way, again, where people decide these things really aren't worth the game.

Kevin Fong: But even absent a war, we still have a commercialization of low-Earth orbit, which now involves constellations of satellites. And even if they're a bit cleaner than they were before, we're seeing an exponential rise in the number of satellites in that sphere.

Scott Pace: Sure. Well, it depends really on how good your space situational awareness is. I don't really worry too much about controlled constellations that they can operate fairly close together. And if they know a lot about themselves, there's not really a lot of uncertainty. The problem is if you don't really have good knowledge of space, then you can have collisions because you simply don't know where the other person is or are not really controlling. Your other problem is dead satellites or ones that have lost control and that has happened. So I think there is a twin need for better space situational awareness to know exactly where things are. And the second is you probably ought to have a way of retrieving and deorbiting and moving things aside if other systems have failed, if they've lost control, you need a tow truck to sometimes you hope not to rely on the tow truck, but every once in a while you might need one, as well as controlling traffic more closely.

Kevin Fong: Tanja.

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Yeah, I just wanted to touch on that as well, because besides perhaps the weapons issue, of course it is the sheer commercialization and privatization of space and the increase of not only the number of countries that is active in space as opposed to the two superpowers of the early days, but also the immense number of private entities. And that ranges from large corporations to even universities who are launching their satellites. So the number, and especially in low Earth orbit of objects that is launched is increasing very, very quickly. And so there is an increased risk of collisions. And these actors are not always aware of the rules. And I agree with Scott. Space situational awareness is a big issue. And also remember that the treaties and the guidelines that we have do not directly bind the private entities and they bind the states. So there is also an increased relevance of national legislation to implement the guidelines and the treaty obligations that we have at the international level. So there is, of course, many countries who make it mandatory to have a debris mitigation plan before you get a license, for instance. And so there is a lot going on also because of simply not military, but commercial developments.

Kevin Fong: Kevin, what do you think?

Kevin Whale: To give you an idea of how far behind we are, if I use that example of a, say, a control zone, if you're flying into a major airport and you know, there's radars and they have within their specific zones, they try to have 100% clarity on what's coming into the zone, whether it's by radar, transponders on the aircraft, talking to the crews, whatever. So that's 100%. In space, if you do the math, the number of active satellites, what are we up now? Somewhere around 6000, depending on how you do the calculation. I think there's been over 9000 put up so far. We're on the path to get to, you know, tens of thousands in the LEO orbits. And there's even beyond that, all the little pieces of parts of natural stuff, plus the stuff that man has put up now, another 500,000 that we're not track. We're only tracking about 45,000 objects in space right now down to about the size of your fist. Well, if you do the math on that, that's the single digit percentage of what's going on in that zone, albeit the different orbits. How comfortable would you feel being on your aircraft with the air traffic controllers saying, don't worry, I'm tracking 9% of everything come in and out of the zone, you should be fine. That's a motivating factor to protect your commercial satellite, your military satellites. So there's a self-motivation factor just by the nature of the domain that kind of drives this hunger for we got to do better with the space domain awareness for sure.

SFX: This is the captain of...

SFX: We got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again, thanks a lot.

Kevin Fong: We're talking here about our backyard a few hundred miles above the Earth. Let's move on, though, to the moon, which is also going to need its own system of regulation and looking after. And in particular, we know the U.S. space agency NASA, with its Artemis program is aiming for a long term sustainable human presence on the moon at the South polar region. And they're working with some space agencies on this and giving commercial opportunities to contractors to provide infrastructure to develop the services they think they're going to need for the lunar economy. But China and Russia also have very similar ambitions to set up shop there. And the real estate that they're all interested in is all in the same place. Do you think there are going to be critical points of tension in this particular version of the space race? I'm going to go to Scott for that one first.

SFX: Well, there certainly can be. If you look at the history of other domains, we can tick off the list of Tibet, Taiwan, South China Seas, Uyghurs, cyberspace, intellectual property theft. I mean, the list goes on. However, space is, I think, one of those areas where there doesn't necessarily need to be a clash of, as the Chinese would say, core interest. A Chinese unmanned lander on the far side of the moon is no particular threat to us. Chinese exploration of Mars is no particular threat to us. That the political situation between China and the U.S., of course, is fairly bad. So the chances for direct, say, human spaceflight cooperation is about zero. On the other hand, even in this kind of political situation, it's possible to imagine other forms of lower level cooperation. We have a way, actually, of exchanging space situational awareness data from spacecraft around Mars. We don't have one around the moon. Probably ought to get one. The Chinese very much have their own plans. They just recently were at the U.N. and talking about some of their plans, which are flying. What sort of missing, however, is really how other countries are going to react. They haven't had a lot of success yet in getting other countries to want to partner with them. A variety of reasons for that. The Russians have talked about partnering with them, but the Russian space enterprise is in deep, deep, deep trouble. It is declining very, very badly, again, for all kinds of reasons. So, I think China is the other major space power other than, you know, the United States and its friends and allies. They have a view of international relations that I don't think is consistent with ours. But can we coexist peacefully? Yeah, I think we can. I think more likely in space than maybe in other regions.

Kevin Fong: Until we know much about what China's plans for the moon are. I mean, as we say, Russia at the moment, the human space program has got a lot of challenges. But China, what do we know about what they're up to, and what they want to do? Kevin.

Kevin Whale: Yeah, China's got 100 year plan and they've stated it openly and they're moving forward on it. So they certainly have ambitions of the same kind of things as the allies do for resources and presence and the base station and all that kind of stuff. So they're certainly not shy about their intentions.

Kevin Fong: Now, Tanja, the legal framework here is also interesting. The United States is inviting countries to sign up to a set of agreements known as the Artemis Accords. 25 nations so far, I think, around that number have come on board. What is the purpose of the Artemis Accords?

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Well, it is a political instrument. It's not a legally binding document. It's not a treaty, but it is a political instrument where the United States assembles allies that want to join its program, the Artemis program, to go back to the moon. So states commit to a number of principles that will dictate the behavior of the partners, who go to that lunar station and further on to Mars and asteroids and so on. So it's quite the scope is quite broad, not limited to the moon. And the Artemis Accords, if you read them, they reiterate a number of the principles that are laid down in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. But they also try to go a little bit more in detail on those aspects that need to be addressed in order to have some good governance of an activity on the moon and the details of which are not yet laid down in those treaties. For instance, if you have a mine on the moon, you want to have a certain respect for the area that you're mining in and you want to have a safety zone around it. But to have that respected by companies of another country, you need to register it. And it would need to be limited in size and scope and time for it not to violate the prohibition of appropriation that is contained in the treaty. For instance, you want to have certain standards on rescuing and helping astronauts in distress. So there's a whole range of practical agreements that you may want to lie down, which the Artemis Accords tried to do. And indeed, the Chinese have a similar plan with their international lunar research station and will surely come up with similar principles. You know, as long as these principles are sort of in parallel. Even if it is a two track approach, I'm not too worried that there will not be cooperation because I agree that both parties will definitely need to collaborate and to work with each other. Maybe that's a bit optimistic or naive, I don't know. But I somehow think that we will be able to do things together because of that absence of sovereignty, the moon is a place for everyone, and I think we should not lose hope that we can do that jointly.

Kevin Fong: And briefly, Tanja, what was China and Russia's attitude towards the Artemis Accords any chance of them signing on?

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: Basically, every nation that wants to sign up to the Artemis Accords could do that. I am not sure if they will. And as I said, I expect that they will come up with a parallel set of principles. I mean, if U.S. and allies and partners are going to have mining operations with safety zones automatically, the other actors will do the same and they will still want there to be one central registry so that your rights are protected and that you also respect the rights of others.

Kevin Fong: Scott, what's your view of all of this?

SFX: Well, I think Tanja's absolutely right. I don't see a fundamental problem, say, with cross recognition. They recognize us. We recognize them. We move on. I personally would like to see a more formal mode of communication back and forth. It's hard for the US to, for example, engage in bilateral discussions with China for all kinds of reasons. But I think we can multilaterally. I think we need to have some place that is multilateral. Hopefully using the UN, I think as a useful tool, but it has sovereign states talking to each other, not just space agencies and not just NGOs and companies, but sovereign states talking to each other about what their plans are for the moon. And then you can deal at an official level with all these various other considerations. So an international committee on Lunar Ops, for example, Romania, Tanja might know, had a proposal like that. The US has said that we're going to look at that closely and think about it. And actually on a lot of space areas we and the Chinese are not that far apart. Both of us are interested in a practical utilization of lunar resources and a skepticism of a centralized international authority that would sort of try to control all this. Chinese have concerns about their sovereignty, just as we do. So in many areas, I can see some overlaps of interest between China and the U.S.. I think we do need to create some better mechanism for communication is more transparent and reciprocal.

Kevin Fong: I kind of want to bring us gently to a close here. The idea of a space, maybe a location in which we learn to behave the way we probably should behave on Earth. Before we close, I want to know from the three of you, starting with Tanja, how does the future look here? What's the way forward? What do we need to do? What do we hope it will look like? Tanja.

Tanja Masson-Zwaan: I think we really have to focus on sustainability and to look at protecting the continued use of space for future generations. Because it is a strategic tool not only for states, but also for all populations on Earth. And to do that, you know, we have the three Cs that were referred to contested, congested and competitive. But we should also look at the issues of safety, security and sustainability. May we look at the three Ss and really pay attention to those and do things, the future lies for me in multilateralism, for sure.

Kevin Fong: Kevin. What's the way forward? What do we want the future look like? What do we need to do to get there?

Kevin Whale: Yeah, anybody that's educated in space and has a vested interest has a vested interest in collaboration, and you're seeing that on all different kinds of levels. The laws are there, but they haven't been tested and exercise like they have in another domains. We need to work through that. We need to keep advocating for the norms of behavior and highlighting the interdependencies that we all share in space. And as Tanja mentioned, I think three Ss are a great moniker of safe, secure, sustainable domain is in everyone's vested interest. You know, imagine if we ruined the oceans, what that would mean to the human race if we ruin space and even just access to space. It's probably not hyperbole to say we have similar destructive effects for the human race. So, we have an interest to get this right and to keep working on it and move faster.

Kevin Fong: Thank you Kevin. Scott.

Scott Pace: I mean, I agree with everything that Tanya and Kevin have said, and I am in general optimistic on the space side of things. However, I think that there are things that could be major disrupters. One could imagine some of those disruptors being a Kessler event syndrome. You know, if we lose control of debris in space and it ruins the sustainability of space. But the other disaster, the most important, I think, disaster I really worry about, frankly, is China, the leadership and the Western Pacific in the next decade. The very dangerous period of time we're going into now. And it's not driven by space, it's driven really by Chinese leadership making different calculations that are distinct and are a break from past leadership decisions. We could have a whole separate discussion about that. But space will inevitably be brought, brought into it. And so I'm not worried about the space part of China. I'm worried about kind of like the rest of it. So maintaining peace and security and deterrence over the next year, maybe two, three decades. Those things work out, I think it's the most important thing we could do to make sure that nothing bad happens to the space.

Kevin Fong: A fascinating discussion, which leaves us with a lot to think about as we make ever more use of space and extend the frontiers of exploration. My huge thanks to Scott Pace, Tanja Masson-Zwaan and Kevin Whale. From GZERO Media, this is Next Giant Leap made in partnership with MDA. I'm Kevin Fong. To hear the whole series, check out the GZERO World Podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.