The State of Space Security

Last Thursday (I can't believe that was a week ago!) I went to an all-day conference on the state of space security. Anyway, it was about making sure that space stays accessible to all nations over time. It's starting to get a bit crowded in space, and we need to be careful to monitor where things are and minimize the amount of debris we create.

There were a bunch of speakers on the topic - discussing the views of countries around the world. Eruope is interested in promoting space situational awareness (knowing what's up there) and guidelines for space traffic (rules of the road for putting things in space). The US has typically been a bit difficult about committing to specific issues, but a speaker for the state department spoke about US interest in international cooperation. Everybody was pretty hard on China, because they conducted an anti-satellite test last January that resulted in an extraordinary amount of debris that is potentially dangerous to other space objects, and will take over 100 years to de-orbit.

More on the Space Security Conference is available on the Space Policy Institute website.