The future of space: congested and contested

Space might be a big place but the United Nations regards it as ‘congested, contested and competitive’. This latest episode of Next Giant Leap, a podcast produced by GZERO Media in partnership with the space company MDA Space, explores the threats and tensions as space becomes busier and of greater strategic importance for an increasing number of countries. “We have to avoid, by all means, that it becomes a Wild West,” says Tanja Masson-Zwaan, a space law expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She adds, “We have regulations, laws and treaties that have been in place for the last fifty years, but we need more to govern this new frontier of space utilization, because the rules that we have are basic principles and do not go into the details.” Satellites are now being deployed to Low Earth Orbit at a rate of thousands every year. This zone of space is already littered with old defunct satellites and the remains of discarded sections of rockets which have accumulated over more...