The Myth Of A Space Pearl Harbor

Iceye-X36 A Russian satellite that made close approaches to an Iceye commercial radar-imaging satellite (above) illustrates the emerging threats to space systems. (credit: Iceye) The myth of the space Pearl Harbor: why space superiority requires staying power by Matt Isler, Alex Gilbert, Morgan Bazilian, and Jahara Matisek Monday, October 26, 2026 On September 14, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced that the United States has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.” He declined to say what kind of weapons they are or how many are in orbit. The disclosure sharpens a question US strategy has yet to answer: what using such weapons would actually achieve in a war. US spacepower rests on a consolidated industrial base and slow acquisition, and future advantage in orbit will turn on building a space industrial base that can sustain launches through a long fight. In mid-October, the Russian satellite Cosmos 2612 spent several days shadowing ICEYE-X36, a radar-imaging satellite owned by the US arm of the Finnish firm ICEYE, at times closing to within a few kilometers. ICEYE has been a major supplier of imagery to Ukraine’s military, although it is unclear whether this particular satellite supports Ukrainian operations, and LeoLabs, which tracked the approach, said its data did not establish hostile intent. Read alongside earlier Russian proximity operations near Western satellites and Chinese satellites practicing “dogfighting” in orbit, the episode shows how hard it is to deter or coerce an adversary that can shadow critical systems at little cost. For a quarter century, since a 2001 congressional commission warned of a “Space Pearl Harbor,” US thinking about space war has centered on a surprise blow that wipes out American space assets and, with them, the US edge in every other domain. That framing misreads how control of space is won. No single kinetic salvo can secure it, because destroying a distributed constellation costs the attacker a great deal and buys only modest military gains. Debris from such strikes could also set off a Kessler cascade, in which fragments from one collision cause others and damage satellites far from the original target. Lasting space superiority depends on staying power, beginning with an industrial base deep enough to absorb and replace losses and the tactical skill to conduct active defensive counterspace (DCS) operations. It also requires launch infrastructure that is resilient and spread across allied territory, along with the diplomatic skill to manage escalation that crosses domains. Analysts have warned that US spacepower rests on a consolidated industrial base and slow acquisition, and future advantage in orbit will turn on building a space industrial base that can sustain launches through a long fight. Why the preemptive strike model fails The case for offensive counterspace holds that preemptive strikes on an adversary’s main space architecture offer the cleanest route to victory. Chinese planners, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency, reason along similar lines and see US dependence on satellites as a weakness to exploit. That logic held when a small cluster of satellites carried most of the load. Proliferated low Earth orbit (pLEO) constellations now spread capability across thousands of spacecraft, so each interceptor imposes a high marginal cost on the attacker while barely denting the network as a whole. Orbits also cannot be partitioned, since debris from a kinetic strike endangers every spacecraft at that altitude, including the attacker’s own, and narrows its later freedom to maneuver. A space war is therefore more likely to be a drawn-out contest of jamming, countermeasures, and replacement launches than a single exchange of fire. In a long fight, finite interceptor stocks would run down early, as the United States found when it reportedly used about a quarter of its upper-tier missile defense interceptors in a 12-day conflict with Iran, and the side that struck first would be left exposed. An “Orbital SEAD” campaign uses jamming, cyber operations and, where needed, lasers that temporarily dazzle imaging sensors to blind parts of an adversary’s kill chain during a strike without creating debris. The pursuit of total orbital dominance follows the same logic as Golden Dome, the proposed homeland missile shield whose space-based interceptor layer would cost too much and could not stop a major attack, two missile defense experts recently argued. Trying to make US satellites invulnerable, or to shut every other actor out of the domain, runs into the same limits of cost and physics. The real target in a space war is a military service, and any single satellite is only one part of the system that service relies on. That system runs from spacecraft through ground stations and data links to the terminals in users’ hands. The Space Force’s 2025 planning framework reflects this by treating attacks on the orbital, link and terrestrial segments as distinct options. Orbital suppression and adversary adaptation Counterspace operations are changing because the architectures they target have spread out. Navigation constellations such as Russia’s GLONASS (24 satellites) and China’s BeiDou (37 in service) concentrate capability in a few dozen expensive spacecraft, most of them in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and, in BeiDou’s case, some in geosynchronous orbits. Against systems like these, direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missiles offered a plausible way to degrade service over a region, and the Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that China probably intends to field ASAT weapons able to reach as high as geosynchronous orbit. Megaconstellations pose a far harder problem, since SpaceX had more than 11,000 working Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) as of mid-October 2026, according to Jonathan McDowell’s tracking. Spending millions of dollars per kinetic kill vehicle against a network built to route data around lost nodes buys little military effect. As launch grows more responsive, destroyed satellites can be replaced in days or weeks instead of months or years, which makes interceptors a poor investment. A better historical parallel is the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. SEAD is judged by the aircraft it keeps alive more than by the radars it destroys, and knocking a radar off the air for a short time was often enough to open a window for a strike package. In space, the equivalent would be an “Orbital SEAD” campaign that uses jamming, cyber operations and, where needed, lasers that temporarily dazzle imaging sensors to blind parts of an adversary’s kill chain during a strike without creating debris. The Space Force’s Meadowlands jammer, accepted for operational use in June 2026, is one tool built for this kind of work. In practice, Orbital SEAD would go after ground-station downlinks, uplinks, and crosslink relays with jamming and cyber intrusion. Because nothing breaks apart in orbit, the United States and its partners keep the use of the same altitudes once the fighting stops. Ukraine already offers a preview, with Reuters reporting in July 2026 that Russian units had begun fielding jammers against the Starlink terminals Ukrainian crews use to steer long-range drones. Mitigating reconstitution bottlenecks through allied integration The line between offensive counterspace (OCS), which seeks to degrade or destroy an adversary’s space capabilities, and active defensive counterspace (DCS), which maneuvers to protect and shield friendly spacecraft, is blurring. A credible US posture should shift investment away from destructive OCS interceptors and toward active DCS and orbital resilience. Deeper cooperation with European and Asian commercial launch providers would spread the supply chain across many countries, complicate adversary targeting, and ensure that an adversary cannot freeze US reconstitution simply by threatening Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg. Kinetic counterspace stockpiles would also run into hard industrial limits, with solid rocket motor (SRM) production already a well-documented bottleneck. Consolidation between 1995 and 2017 shrank the US SRM base from six firms to two, now Northrop Grumman and L3Harris (through Aerojet Rocketdyne). Newer entrants such as Anduril, Ursa Major, and X-Bow are trying to scale up, but the two incumbents remain stretched by simultaneous demand from tactical missile lines and the Sentinel ICBM program. Every kinetic interceptor would compete for the same casting lines, specialized tooling and propellant chemicals, including ammonium perchlorate, for which American Pacific Corporation is the only US source. A military cannot claim space superiority if it cannot replace orbital losses under fire, and launch timing works against fast replacement. We call this constraint the “space tyranny of distance.” A rocket headed for a particular orbital plane has to wait until Earth’s rotation carries the launch site under that plane, which can hold a mission on the ground for hours. American launch also hinges on a single provider, with SpaceX accounting for roughly 90% of all Western launch mass to orbit, according to Ars Technica. Falcon 9 was grounded twice in the summer of 2024 alone, and any fleet-wide grounding would stall the American launch pipeline. The alternatives are in no position to absorb a surge. The Space Force has kept ULA’s Vulcan off national security missions since a solid rocket booster anomaly in February 2026, and a May 2026 explosion destroyed a New Glenn rocket and wrecked Blue Origin’s only operational pad. A 2025 Government Accountability Office report found federal range infrastructure strained by the rising launch rate, and slow pad turnaround at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base, would further limit how quickly the United States could recover in a crisis. A further option lies in what one of us has defined as the “space littoral,” the band of near-space and very low Earth orbit (VLEO) between roughly 20 and 450 kilometers. In the most recent batch of national security launch orders, SpaceX’s missions averaged about $143 million each and ULA’s about $214 million. Sounding rockets flown from ranges such as Poker Flat in Alaska, White Sands in New Mexico, and Wallops in Virginia can lift sensors through the lower littoral, though each flight is suborbital and lasts only minutes. Higher in the band, small launchers can place inexpensive, short-lived satellites into low orbits on short notice, as the Space Force showed in 2023 when it put its Victus Nox satellite into orbit 27 hours after issuing launch orders. Neither option replaces heavy lift, but both offer a way to restore some sensing and communications while the main ranges are congested. That logjam makes allied launch integration a strategic necessity, since allied ranges such as Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, SaxaVord in Scotland and, for suborbital flights, South Australia’s Koonibba Test Range would let the US military work around the geographic limits on launch timing. Deeper cooperation with European and Asian commercial launch providers would spread the supply chain across many countries, complicate adversary targeting, and ensure that an adversary cannot freeze US reconstitution simply by threatening Cape Canaveral or Vandenberg. The commons, attribution, and strategic action Outer space is a shared global commons, and reckless behavior there has lasting consequences. China’s 2007 SC-19 test against its own Fengyun-1C weather satellite produced more than 3,000 tracked fragments, and spacecraft including the International Space Station have had to maneuver around the remnants, with US military satellites still dodging them years later. Operating in a domain this crowded requires high-fidelity space domain awareness (SDA), because hostile acts can be disguised as space weather, hardware faults, or accidental collisions. Without fast and reliable attribution, deterrence fails, since an adversary that expects to mask or deny its aggression has little reason to hold back. If Washington stays fixated on an orbital Pearl Harbor, it will keep over-investing in fragile offensive counterspace systems at the expense of staying power. Deterrence in space depends on clear thresholds and reliable attribution, backed by a mix of denial and punishment capabilities. Reported Russian work on an orbital nuclear anti-satellite weapon shows what is at stake. A nuclear detonation in orbit would damage unhardened satellites in direct line of sight and pump up the Van Allen radiation belts for months, degrading commercial, scientific and neutral countries’ satellites along with military ones. A strike of this kind could trigger a global economic shock without causing a single casualty on Earth. The United States and its partners need clear norms for maneuvering in orbit, especially as countries including France, Japan, and India develop “bodyguard” satellites that can shield other spacecraft and respond to threats. Any US escorts used for active DCS would need transparency and pre-announced operating thresholds. By convening open talks on reducing space threats, Washington could shape the rules for future conflict in orbit. Clear norms would make it less likely that defensive maneuvers are mistaken for preemptive attacks, lowering the risk of accidental escalation while making it easier to hold aggressive actors publicly accountable. The first step is for Space Systems Command to diversify its launch partnerships by speeding certification of alternative heavy- and medium-lift providers, including allied international sites, so that no single provider accounts for more than 65 percent of surge capacity by the end of 2028. Second, the Space Force must move research and development funding away from destructive kinetic counterspace projects and toward orbital maneuver, defensive shielding, and on-orbit servicing, with the aim of flying active DCS escorts alongside high-value assets by 2027. Third, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment must invest in domestic SRM production, qualifying a second US source of ammonium perchlorate and expanding automated propellant casting capacity by 2028. Finally, Congress must appropriate dedicated funds to upgrade and automate national launch ranges, cutting pad refurbishment and turnaround times for reconstitution payloads to under 48 hours. America’s acknowledgment of weapons in orbit makes the quality of its strategy more consequential. The value of those weapons will depend on whether they open real military opportunities while the United States and its allies keep their own ability to operate. If Washington stays fixated on an orbital Pearl Harbor, it will keep over-investing in fragile offensive counterspace systems at the expense of staying power. Space control in practice will come from Orbital SEAD that suppresses adversary systems long enough to open windows of advantage, because permanent ownership of the domain is out of reach. The side that can absorb losses and put new satellites in orbit fastest will hold space superiority, whatever happens in the opening salvo. Matt Isler is a retired Air Force general who works for Northrop Gruman and is a Fellow at the Payne Institute of Public Policy. Alex Gilbert is a fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy and principal at Rocinante Fieldworks. Morgan Bazilian is a professor and director of the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Lt. Colonel Jahara Matisek is a fellow at the National Defense University and the Payne Institute. Note: we are now moderating comments. 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Orbital Debris-The Kinship Between Oceans And Outer Space

debris As the space community grapples with issues like orbital debris, the oceans provide lessons on what not to do. (credit: ESA/Spacejunk3D, LLC) Two commons, one pattern: the ethical kinship of the ocean and outer space by Stephen P. Wood Monday, October 26, 2026 In 1609 the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius argued in Mare Liberum that the sea could belong to no one: it was too vast to be possessed and too abundant to be exhausted.[1] Three and a half centuries later, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 declared outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies the “province of all mankind,” free for exploration and use by all states and not subject to national appropriation.[2] The two texts are separated by 358 years, yet they rest on the same premise: that some places are so large, so remote, and so resistant to ownership that they belong to everyone. In practice, as history has repeatedly shown, places that belong to everyone tend to belong to whoever arrives first with the means to use them. The ocean is a largely completed experiment in what happens when a commons is used without adequate governance. Space is the same experiment in its opening stages. The ocean and outer space are humanity’s two great global commons, and the resemblance runs far deeper than legal status. Both were long imagined as infinite. Both have been used as dumping grounds on the assumption that sheer size would dilute any harm. Both are now contested between those who would preserve them and those who would extract value from them. In both, the technology to exploit has consistently outpaced the institutions meant to restrain it. What separates them is chronology. The ocean is a largely completed experiment in what happens when a commons is used without adequate governance. Space is the same experiment in its opening stages. This essay argues that the ethical lessons of the first must govern the second, and that the window to apply them is closing faster than most policymakers appreciate. The myth of the infinite For most of human history, the ocean’s size was its presumed defense. Waste dumped offshore was expected to disappear, and fish were expected to replenish themselves without limit. At the 1883 International Fisheries Exhibition in London, Thomas Henry Huxley, among the most respected biologists of his age, told his audience that he believed the great sea fisheries were inexhaustible and that nothing humans did could seriously affect the number of fish.[3] He was wrong, and the century that followed demonstrated just how wrong. Spaceflight inherited a version of the same faith, known informally among orbital engineers as the “big sky” assumption: space is so vast and spacecraft so small that collisions would be vanishingly rare. In 1978, NASA scientists Donald Kessler and Burton Cour-Palais showed why that assumption would eventually fail. Once the density of objects in low Earth orbit passed a critical threshold, collisions would generate fragments that caused further collisions, producing a self-sustaining cascade now known as the Kessler syndrome.[4] The ocean’s equivalent was never given a name, but its structure is identical: a resource treated as limitless until the moment its limits become catastrophically obvious. Littering both commons The ocean has served as humanity’s sink for centuries. Nations dumped radioactive waste at sea for decades before 1993 amendments to the London Convention banned the practice.[5] After the Second World War, large stockpiles of chemical munitions were sunk in coastal waters. Today, the dominant pollutant is plastic. An estimated 19 to 23 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the world’s rivers, lakes, and oceans in 2016 alone, and the trajectory is upward.[6] The Great Pacific Garbage Patch holds roughly 79,000 metric tons of floating plastic spread across 1.6 million square kilometers, and at least 46% of its mass is discarded fishing gear.[7] A plastic bag has been recorded at nearly 11,000 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on Earth.[8] Negotiations toward a binding global plastics treaty ended in Geneva in August 2025 without agreement and remain unresolved.[9] The abandoned net deserves a moment of attention, because it has a precise analog in orbit. A ghost net continues to catch and kill long after the vessel that set it has gone. A derelict satellite or spent rocket stage continues to threaten every working spacecraft that shares its orbit for years, decades, or centuries after its mission has ended. In both cases the harm outlives the purpose, and the cost is transferred from the party that created it to everyone who comes after. If pollution is the slow injury of a commons, overexploitation is its acute one, and the ocean’s record is grim and strikingly consistent. The orbital environment is now accumulating debris on a trajectory the European Space Agency (ESA) describes in increasingly urgent terms. According to its 2026 Space Environment Report, more than 300 launches placed over 4,000 new payloads into orbit in 2025—roughly ten every day—while the debris population grew even faster.[10] ESA’s Space Environment Health Index, which compares current behavior against a sustainable benchmark set in 2014, rose from about 4 to about 50 in a single year, an order-of-magnitude deterioration.[10] The agency’s long-term projections now show such rapid growth in objects and collisions that the modeling horizon was cut from 200 years to 100, and ESA states that even if no further satellites were launched, fragmentation would continue to drive the debris population upward.[10] Some of this damage was deliberate. China’s 2007 anti-satellite test against its own Fengyun-1C weather satellite generated more than 3,000 trackable fragments, and Russia’s 2021 test against Kosmos 1408 generated more than 1,500 more.[11] Meanwhile, a single commercial constellation, SpaceX’s Starlink, now has roughly 11,000 satellites in orbit,[12] and regulatory filings propose constellations numbering in the tens of thousands. Nor does orbital debris stay in orbit. Spacecraft that reenter the atmosphere vaporize into metallic particulates; aluminum and other metals from reentering hardware have already been detected in about 10% of sampled stratospheric aerosol particles, with consequences for ozone chemistry and climate that are not yet understood.[13] Spacecraft too large to burn up are steered toward Point Nemo, the place in the South Pacific farthest from any land, where hundreds of vehicles have been deliberately sunk since the 1970s. The International Space Station is slated to follow them at the end of its operational life around 2030.[14] The two commons are thus not merely analogous; they are physically connected, because we dispose of our orbital waste in the ocean. Even the Moon has not been spared: more than 180 metric tons of human hardware and refuse lie on its surface, including 96 bags of human waste left behind during the Apollo missions.[15] The debris keeps arriving: in August 2026 a spent Falcon 9 upper stage, stranded in a high Earth orbit after a January 2025 lunar launch, struck the Moon near Einstein crater and left a new crater roughly 18 meters across.[16] Exploited to the brink: the ocean’s record If pollution is the slow injury of a commons, overexploitation is its acute one, and the ocean’s record is grim and strikingly consistent. Steller’s sea cow, a kelp-grazing relative of the manatee that may have reached eight meters in length, was described by Western naturalists in 1741. Hunted for meat by fur-trading expeditions, it was extinct by 1768, within 27 years of its scientific discovery.[17] Twentieth-century industrial whaling killed nearly 2.9 million great whales.[18] Antarctic blue whales, the largest animals ever known to have lived, were reduced from an estimated 239,000 to roughly 360 individuals by 1973, about 0.15% of their former abundance.[19] The northern cod of Newfoundland’s Grand Banks, which had supported fisheries for nearly five centuries, collapsed in the early 1990s; Canada’s 1992 moratorium eliminated tens of thousands of jobs at a stroke, and the stock has never fully recovered.[20] Globally, fleets have progressively “fished down” marine food webs, depleting large predators and turning to smaller species lower in the chain.[21] Today, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026 classifies 37.6% of assessed marine stocks as overfished, and the share of biologically sustainable stocks has fallen from 64.5% to 62.4% since the previous report.[22] The sequence is nearly identical in each case: an open-access resource; a technological leap such as steam-powered catcher boats, explosive harpoons, factory trawlers, or sonar; a race to capture value before competitors do; scientific warnings dismissed as alarmist or economically naïve; collapse; and, finally, regulation enacted after the damage has been done. The International Whaling Commission did not adopt its moratorium on commercial whaling until 1982, decades after many populations had been driven to the edge of extinction. The pattern is now repeating on the deep seafloor. The Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a vast abyssal plain in the Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico, is scattered with polymetallic nodules rich in nickel, cobalt, manganese, and copper. It is also home to an extraordinary and largely unknown fauna: a 2023 synthesis recorded 5,578 species there and estimated that 88% to 92% of them are new to science.[23] A 2024 study reported that the nodules themselves may generate oxygen on the lightless seafloor.[24] That finding remains contested, but the controversy itself shows how little we understand of the ecosystem we propose to strip-mine. A “safety zone” around a lunar ice deposit is functionally similar to an exclusive fishing ground. It need not be called ownership to operate as ownership. The International Seabed Authority (ISA) has spent more than a decade drafting an exploitation code without finalizing it. In April 2025, the United States issued Executive Order 14285, directing expedited permitting under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980, a Cold War-era statute that treats seabed mining in international waters as a freedom of the high seas.[25] NOAA finalized a consolidated permitting rule in January 2026,[26] and in August 2026 NOAA found The Metals Company’s consolidated application to mine the zone fully compliant and opened it for public comment, a path that bypasses the ISA and has drawn objections from its member states and from environmental scientists.[27] Dozens of nations have called for a moratorium or precautionary pause. We are preparing to industrialize an ecosystem we have not yet catalogued. The same script, rewritten for space The legal history of space resources tracks the deep seabed with uncanny fidelity. In November 1967, the year the Outer Space Treaty entered into force, Malta’s ambassador to the United Nations, Arvid Pardo, asked the General Assembly to declare the seabed beyond national jurisdiction the “common heritage of mankind,” to be managed internationally for the benefit of all nations, with particular regard for developing ones.[28] The principle was written into Part XI of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Industrialized nations objected to its redistributive provisions, and a 1994 Implementation Agreement substantially weakened them; the United States has never ratified the convention at all.[29] Space has followed the same arc, step for step. The 1979 Moon Agreement declared the Moon and its natural resources the common heritage of mankind and called for an international regime to govern their exploitation.[30] No major spacefaring nation joined it, and only 17 states are parties today.[31] In 2015, the United States enacted the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, recognizing its citizens’ rights to own space resources they extract.[32] Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan followed with similar laws. The Artemis Accords, a non-binding set of principles first signed in 2020, state that extracting space resources does not in itself constitute national appropriation and introduce “safety zones” around signatories’ operations.[33] More than 70 nations have now signed,[34] while China and Russia advance a competing framework, the International Lunar Research Station. The parallel is exact: an ambitious common-heritage principle, rejected by the states with the capacity to exploit; a unilateral domestic statute asserting a right to extract; and a coalition of the willing that substitutes voluntary principles for binding international governance (Table 1). The resources at stake are increasingly concrete. NASA has announced plans for a sustained Moon Base,[34, 35] and the most valuable lunar real estate is remarkably small: the permanently shadowed craters near the south pole where water ice is concentrated, and a handful of crater rims bathed in near-continuous sunlight. Commercial ventures have announced plans to harvest helium-3 from lunar regolith and return it to Earth beginning in the 2030s,[36] and asteroid-mining companies continue to attract investment. Orbits themselves are a finite resource; the most useful altitude shells in low Earth orbit are occupied largely on a first-come basis, and the constellations that fill them first constrain everyone who follows. A “safety zone” around a lunar ice deposit is functionally similar to an exclusive fishing ground. It need not be called ownership to operate as ownership. Table 1. Parallel histories of two global commons Dimension The Ocean Outer Space Founding doctrine Freedom of the seas (Grotius, 1609) Province of all mankind; non-appropriation (Outer Space Treaty, 1967) Myth of limitlessness Fisheries judged “inexhaustible” (Huxley, 1883); waste assumed to dilute “Big sky” assumption that collisions would be vanishingly rare Accumulating waste 19–23 million metric tons of plastic entering waters per year; ghost gear ≥46% of Pacific garbage patch mass Debris growth outpacing removal; ESA Health Index rose from ~4 to ~50 in one year Harm that outlives its purpose Ghost nets that keep fishing Derelict satellites and rocket bodies; Kessler cascade Overexploitation Steller’s sea cow, great whales, Grand Banks cod; 37.6% of assessed stocks overfished Orbital shells, lunar polar ice, helium-3, asteroids (prospective) Common-heritage principle UNCLOS Part XI (1982), weakened in 1994 Moon Agreement (1979), rejected by major spacefaring states Unilateral workaround Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (1980); Executive Order 14285 (2025) Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (2015); Artemis Accords (2020–) Recent governance progress High Seas Treaty in force (January 2026) 5-year LEO disposal guideline; Zero Debris Charter (voluntary) Sources as cited in the text. LEO, low Earth orbit; UNCLOS, United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Where the analogy strains, and why it still holds The strongest objection to this comparison deserves a direct answer. The ocean is alive; as far as we know, the Moon, the asteroids, and orbital space are not. A whale can suffer and a fishery can collapse, but lunar regolith has no ecosystem to destroy. If moral concern rests on harm to living beings, perhaps space is simply a quarry, and the ethics of the sea do not transfer. I would argue that they transfer for four reasons. First, harm to human beings is sufficient. Orbital debris threatens the weather forecasting, navigation, communications, climate monitoring, and satellite-aided search and rescue on which modern life, and many lives at sea, depend, and reentry pollution reaches the living atmosphere. Second, scientific value is irreplaceable. The Moon’s polar ice may preserve a record of the early solar system spanning billions of years, and once excavated it cannot be restored. The planetary protection policy of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) exists precisely because careless exploration of Mars, Europa, or Enceladus could contaminate or destroy evidence of extraterrestrial life before we are capable of detecting it,[37] a risk that mirrors the prospect of erasing undescribed abyssal species before they are named. Third, cultural value is real. The night sky is the oldest shared heritage of every human culture; astronomers now contend with satellite streaks across their images, and in January 2024 the Navajo Nation formally objected to a commercial mission carrying human remains to the Moon, calling it a desecration of a celestial body that many Diné regard as sacred.[38] Fourth, irreversibility carries moral weight independent of whether the thing harmed is alive. We rightly treat the destruction of an ancient monument as a wrong even though stone does not suffer. The case for use Fairness requires acknowledging that those who favor extraction are not simply villains. The global energy transition requires nickel, cobalt, and copper in enormous quantities, and terrestrial mining of these metals has been linked to tropical deforestation, contaminated watersheds, and exploitative labor. Proponents of seabed mining argue, not unreasonably, that nodules lying loose on the seafloor may carry a smaller human and terrestrial footprint than an open-pit mine. Satellite broadband reaches remote, rural, and disaster-stricken communities that terrestrial networks have never served. Lunar water could supply drinking water, oxygen, and rocket propellant, reducing the need to launch everything from Earth. ESA itself reports genuine progress: the shift from a 25-year to a 5-year disposal guideline in low Earth orbit is shortening satellite lifetimes, and controlled reentries of rocket bodies have outnumbered uncontrolled ones for the second straight year.[10] Critics of strict precaution also warn, with some justification, that it can entrench the nations and companies already in orbit while denying latecomers the benefits that early movers enjoyed. These arguments are serious, and they reframe the central question. The choice is rarely between preservation and use. It is between use governed in advance and use governed only after collapse. The ocean’s history shows that the second option has a predictable outcome, and that its costs fall most heavily on those who had the least say in the decisions. An Ethical Lens from the Bedside Clinical ethics offers a familiar vocabulary for problems of this kind. Nonmaleficence asks us first to avoid harm, and above all irreversible harm. Beneficence asks that the use of shared resources produce genuine good rather than private gain alone. Justice asks how benefits and burdens are distributed: across nations, including those in the Global South whose coastal fisheries have been depleted by distant-water fleets and who will inherit crowded orbits they did not fill, and across generations. Respect for persons is the most difficult principle to apply, because the people most affected by today’s decisions have not yet been born. In the clinic, when a patient cannot speak for themselves, a surrogate is obligated to act in that patient’s best interest. In the commons, the present generation is the surrogate for every generation that follows, and we are held to the same standard. ESA’s report reaches the same conclusion in plainer language, warning that without faster and more reliable mitigation we are “saddling future generations with a high price to pay.”[10] In medicine, we do not wait for a patient to arrest before responding to the warning signs. The ocean is the case we learned from too late; space is the patient still in front of us, and the warning signs are already on the monitor. Three further traditions sharpen the point. Garrett Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons” predicted that shared resources would inevitably be ruined by individual self-interest.[39] Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work showed that the tragedy is not inevitable: commons can be sustained when users establish clear boundaries, monitor use, apply graduated sanctions, and participate in making the rules.[40] The collapse of so many fisheries was therefore a failure of governance, not a law of nature. Hans Jonas, writing on the ethics of technological civilization, argued that when our power to act extends far into the future, our responsibility must extend just as far.[41] And the precautionary principle, articulated in the 1992 Rio Declaration, holds that a lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to postpone measures that would prevent serious or irreversible environmental damage.[42] What the ocean teaches If the ocean is the case we learned from too late, it nonetheless yields concrete lessons for space. Govern before the rush. Nearly every major fishery collapse was followed by regulation; almost none were preceded by it. Rules for lunar resource extraction, orbital carrying capacity, and debris liability should be negotiated now, while the number of actors is still small and the stakes are still largely prospective, rather than after a lunar ice deposit has been contested or a key orbital shell has become unusable. Make the polluter pay. The ocean has long allowed vessels to externalize the costs of lost gear and discharged waste, and orbit currently does the same. Economists have estimated that an internationally harmonized orbital-use fee could more than quadruple the long-run value of the satellite industry by curbing collision risk.[43] Debris-removal bonds, end-of-life performance deposits, and dedicated funding for active debris removal, which ESA now describes as necessary rather than optional, would align private incentives with the public interest.[10] Bind, do not merely pledge. The 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling relied for decades on industry-friendly quotas while whale populations continued to fall. Voluntary instruments such as the Artemis Accords and ESA’s Zero Debris Charter are valuable starting points, but the history of the sea suggests that good intentions without enforcement rarely survive a profitable opportunity. Share the benefits. The common-heritage principle faltered at sea in part because nations with the capacity to act saw it as all burden and no reward. The new High Seas Treaty offers a more workable model, pairing access to marine genetic resources with monetary and non-monetary benefit-sharing, capacity building, and technology transfer.[44] A comparable framework for space resources would give the Global South a stake in the system rather than a seat outside it. Protect some places entirely. Marine protected areas, and the international commitment to protect 30% of the ocean by 2030, rest on the recognition that some places should be left alone. The same logic supports scientific reserves in lunar polar craters, protection of the radio-quiet far side of the Moon for astronomy, and preservation of historic landing sites, which the United States began to address in the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act of 2020.[45] It also supports a precautionary pause on deep-sea mining until baseline science can tell us what would be lost. Conclusion None of this is utopian. On January 17, 2026, after nearly two decades of negotiation, the High Seas Treaty entered into force with more than 80 ratifications, establishing for the first time a legal mechanism to create protected areas and require environmental impact assessments in the waters beyond national jurisdiction, which cover nearly two-thirds of the ocean.[44] Many great whale populations, humpbacks prominent among them, have rebounded since the commercial whaling moratorium. The Montreal Protocol, the first treaty to achieve universal ratification, set the ozone layer on a path to recovery through binding and enforceable commitments. Commons can be governed. The only question is whether we govern them in time. The sea and the sky are two chapters of the same story. In the first, we believed the resource was infinite, treated it as a sink, raced one another to extract its wealth, dismissed the scientists who warned us, and legislated only after the collapse. We are now writing the second chapter, and its early pages read almost word for word like the first. What is different is that this time we have the first chapter in hand. In medicine, we do not wait for a patient to arrest before responding to the warning signs. The ocean is the case we learned from too late; space is the patient still in front of us, and the warning signs are already on the monitor. We are the first generation able to see the whole arc, from Grotius’s free sea to the bottom-trawled seamount, from the Outer Space Treaty to the debris cascade. We may also be the last generation able to change how the second arc ends. Endnotes Grotius H. Mare Liberum [The Free Sea]. Leiden: Elzevir; 1609. United Nations. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. 610 UNTS 205. Opened for signature January 27, 1967; entered into force October 10, 1967. Huxley TH. Inaugural address. In: The Fisheries Exhibition Literature. Vol 4. London: William Clowes and Sons; 1884:1-19. Kessler DJ, Cour-Palais BG. Collision frequency of artificial satellites: the creation of a debris belt. J Geophys Res. 1978;83(A6):2637-2646. International Maritime Organization. Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, 1972 (1993 amendments, resolution LC.51(16), in force February 20, 1994). Accessed October 4, 2026. Borrelle SB, Ringma J, Law KL, et al. Predicted growth in plastic waste exceeds efforts to mitigate plastic pollution. Science. 2020;369(6510):1515-1518. Lebreton L, Slat B, Ferrari F, et al. Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic. Sci Rep. 2018;8:4666. Chiba S, Saito H, Fletcher R, et al. Human footprint in the abyss: 30 year records of deep-sea plastic debris. Mar Policy. 2018;96:204-212. Einhäupl P, Del Savio L, Bergmann M, Jahnke A. The global plastics treaty can be saved — here’s how to break the deadlock. Nature. 2026;650. doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00314-4 European Space Agency Space Debris Office. ESA’s Annual Space Environment Report 2026. Darmstadt, Germany: ESA/ESOC; September 8, 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026. Samson V, ed. Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment. Secure World Foundation; April 2025. Accessed October 4, 2026. McDowell J. Starlink statistics. Jonathan’s Space Report. Accessed September 2026. Murphy DM, Abou-Ghanem M, Cziczo DJ, et al. Metals from spacecraft reentry in stratospheric aerosol particles. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023;120(43):e2313374120. NASA. NASA selects International Space Station US deorbit vehicle [press release]. June 26, 2024. Accessed October 4, 2026. Royal Museums Greenwich. The strange things humans have left on the Moon. Accessed October 4, 2026. NASA images reveal 60-foot-wide crater on moon left by SpaceX rocket. Scientific American. August 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026. Turvey ST, Risley CL. Modelling the extinction of Steller’s sea cow. Biol Lett. 2006;2(1):94-97. Rocha RC Jr, Clapham PJ, Ivashchenko YV. Emptying the oceans: a summary of industrial whaling catches in the 20th century. Mar Fish Rev. 2014;76(4):37-48. Branch TA, Matsuoka K, Miyashita T. Evidence for increases in Antarctic blue whales based on Bayesian modelling. Mar Mamm Sci. 2004;20(4):726-754. Myers RA, Hutchings JA, Barrowman NJ. Why do fish stocks collapse? The example of cod in Atlantic Canada. Ecol Appl. 1997;7(1):91-106. Pauly D, Christensen V, Dalsgaard J, Froese R, Torres F Jr. Fishing down marine food webs. Science. 1998;279(5352):860-863. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2026. Rome: FAO; 2026. Rabone M, Wiethase JH, Simon-Lledó E, et al. How many metazoan species live in the world’s largest mineral exploration region? Curr Biol. 2023;33(12):2383-2396. Sweetman AK, Smith AJ, de Jonge DSW, et al. Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor. Nat Geosci. 2024;17:737-739. Executive Order 14285. Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources. Signed April 24, 2025. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Final rule revising regulations under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act (consolidated exploration license and commercial recovery permit). Issued January 21, 2026. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA advances review of first-ever deep seabed mining commercial recovery application [press release]. August 19, 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026. Pardo A. Address to the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. UN Doc A/C.1/PV.1515–1516. November 1, 1967. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. 1833 UNTS 3 (1982); Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI. 1836 UNTS 3 (1994). United Nations. Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. 1363 UNTS 3 (1979). United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Legal Subcommittee. Status of international agreements relating to activities in outer space as at 1 January 2025. UN Doc A/AC.105/C.2/2025/CRP.9. May 5, 2025. U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. Pub L No. 114-90, 129 Stat 704 (2015). NASA, U.S. Department of State. The Artemis Accords: Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes. October 13, 2020. NASA. NASA welcomes Türkiye as newest Artemis Accords signatory [press release]. August 31, 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026./ NASA. NASA joins Artemis Accords workshop as global signings rise [press release]. May 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026. Interlune raises $5M for initiatives that go beyond mining the moon. GeekWire. 2026. Accessed October 4, 2026. COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection. COSPAR policy on planetary protection. Space Res Today. 2026;224:17-39. Navajo Nation opposes plans to send human remains to the moon. UPI. January 6, 2024. Accessed October 4, 2026. Hardin G. The tragedy of the commons. Science. 1968;162(3859):1243-1248. Ostrom E. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1990. Jonas H. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; 1984. United Nations. Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, Principle 15. UN Doc A/CONF.151/26 (Vol. I); 1992. Rao A, Burgess MG, Kaffine D. Orbital-use fees could more than quadruple the value of the space industry. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020;117(23):12756-12762. United Nations. Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas beyond National Jurisdiction. Adopted June 19, 2023; entered into force January 17, 2026. One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act. Pub L No. 116-275 (2020). Stephen P. Wood, DMSc, ACNP, NRP, FNAP, FAWM, is a clinical associate professor in the School of Nursing at Northeastern University’s Bouvé College of Health Sciences and director of ethics at Faulkner Hospital, Mass General Brigham, in Boston. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employers.

Dodging Bullets and Firing Blanks

Griffin-1 Voyager’s Griffin-1 lander remains on track to launch late this year after completing environmental testing. It is only US robotic lander still planning a launch in 2026 after others suffered delays. (credit: Voyager Technologies) Dodging bullets and firing blanks by Jeff Foust Monday, October 26, 2026 For all the talk about a race to the Moon between the United States and China, there’s been little in the way of actual missions to the Moon this year. “We may have dodged a bullet with the Chang’e-7 mission a couple weeks ago,” Isaacman said. Beyond the successful Artemis 2 lunar flyby in April, the most anticipated lunar mission this year was China’s Chang’e-7. The mission featured an orbiter and lander, with the latter touching down near the lunar south pole. That lander also included a rover and a hopper, along with a suite of instruments to prospect for water ice. Chang’e-7 was to launch in late August on a Long March 5. However, the China Manned Space Engineering Office abruptly called off the launch just hours before the scheduled liftoff, after the rocket had rolled out to the pad. The delay initially was linked to weather, as a typhoon was near the Wenchang spaceport hosting the launch. However, the launch has been postponed indefinitely, at least to some time next year. Chinese officials have not disclosed what caused the extended delay, although there have been suggestions that the mission had a narrow launch window caused by lighting conditions at the landing site. Whatever the reason, it was greeted with relief in Washington. “We may have dodged a bullet with the Chang’e-7 mission a couple weeks ago, because that would have gone to the Shackleton crater,” NASA administrator Jared Isaacman said in a talk at the Off World conference in Houston a month after the Chang’e-7 delay. His argument was that China was targeting one of a small number of locations near the lunar south pole that may be ideal locations for lunar bases. Had Chang’e-7 landed there, it “could have potentially denied access to some of the most interesting spots,” he claimed. But China is not the only one facing delays in their lunar exploration plans. Early this year, NASA touted up to four robotic lunar lander missions, all part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, launching in 2026. They included Astrobotic’s Griffin-1, Blue Origin’s first Blue Moon Mark 1, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 2, and Intuitive Machines’ IM-3. With just over two months left in the year, none of the four have launched. The Blue Moon Mark 1 lander, called Endurance, appeared to be in line to launch first, but has been grounded by the New Glenn pad explosion and is now not expected to launch until early 2027. “By the end of calendar year 2026, we’ll have made ten additional [CLPS] task order awards,” Stephan said. “That’s due to the demand signal that we got from our administrator.” Blue Ghost 2 and IM-3 have also seen their launches slip into 2027. In a talk Monday at the American Astronautical Society’s Von Braun Space Exploration Symposium, Ryan Cole, spacecraft engines manager at Firefly, showed a recent photo of Blue Ghost 2 still being assembled at the company’s Texas factory. The lander, he noted, was still lacking its engines and other propulsion system components. “We have quite a lot of work to do before the end of the year, when we’re trying to have all of that closed out,” he said. That leaves Griffin-1. Earlier this month, Voyager Lunar Systems—the new name for Astrobotic after it was acquired this summer by Voyager Technologies—announced it had completed environmental testing of the lander at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The lander was back at its Pittsburgh facility for some final work before shipping to Cape Canaveral for a launch it said was still planned for late this year. However, Ryan Stephan, acting director of the cargo landers office for NASA’s Moon Base program, said in a talk at an October 14 meeting of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) that the launch was planned for “end of this year, beginning of next year.” The slides accompanying his talk listed a launch date of no earlier than January 2027. Those delays come as NASA seeks to accelerate the pace of lunar landings. The agency announced at its Ignition event in March an ambitious push of robotic lunar lander missions to support plans for that base, starting with precursor missions before moving to larger landers that would provide infrastructure for the base. Stephan noted there are 15 CLPS missions under contract, several of which have been awarded since Ignition. “By the end of calendar year 2026, we’ll have made ten additional task order awards,” he said. “That’s due to the demand signal that we got from our administrator.” Companies have been gearing up for that growth. Cole said that Blue Ghost 2 was just one of four spacecraft in various stages of construction at Firefly for lunar missions. Those include landers as well as a spacecraft that will ferry to the Moon NASA’s MoonFall mission, a set of three hoppers under development by JPL that will touch down on the Moon and then hop from one location to another across the surface. A challenge, though, is the success rate. Of the four CLPS missions flown to date, only one, Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 lander, was fully successful. The IM-1 and IM-2 landers toppled over upon landing, with IM-2 operating for less than a day. Astrobotic’s Peregrine suffered a propulsion malfunction shortly after its launch and was not able to attempt a landing. CLPS started with what NASA called a “shots on goal” philosophy, accepting that some missions would fail. But the agency wants to shift that approach as it counts on landers to support the lunar base. “It’s shots on goal and win the game,” quipped Carlos García-Galán, NASA’s Moon Base program manager, in March. At Ignition, he outlined an ambitious lineup of missions, including nine lunar landings in 2027 and ten in 2028. However, speaking at a meeting of the Space Studies Board last week, Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, mentioned only the goal of ten CLPS missions in 2028. What about 2027? “We’ll use ’27 to ramp up to it,” she said. “To have ten landings in 2027 you have to have ten landers ready to go.” “The latitude to execute on our strategy is based on China,” Isaacman said. “Absent that global competition, very little of the progress that we have made over this past year would be in play right now.” Many of those future missions will be part of a new contract, called CLPS 2.0, that NASA requested proposals for earlier this year. CLPS 2.0 will enable up to $10 billion on awards for future landers and other lunar missions. Stephan said that NASA planned to announce the companies selected for CLPS 2.0 in November at the agency’s “Max Power” air show at the Kennedy Space Center. Despite the delays in both China and the United States, NASA has continued to emphasize a race to return to the Moon. Isaacman, speaking at the Off World conference last month, said American leadership in general was at risk should China land its astronauts on the Moon before NASA returns. “If you come up short with who comes down the ladder first, the impact is felt around the world.” He acknowledged, though, that NASA’s ability to revamp and accelerate its own lunar plans is based on that perceived space race with China. “The latitude to execute on our strategy is based on China,” he said. “Absent that global competition, very little of the progress that we have made over this past year would be in play right now.” It’s a race, though, where the competitors are only slowly getting out of the starting blocks. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

One Concept for The Golden Dome Missile Defense

Golden Dome One concept for the Golden Dome missile defense system with space-based elements. (credit: Redwire) Sensor-to-shooter is a decision, not a wire by Bharath Gopalaswamy and Daniel Dant Monday, October 26, 2026 On September 14, at the Air and Space Forces Association conference, Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink said plainly what no American official had said before: the United States has space control weapons in orbit, “capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action.” The same day, General Michael Guetlein, Golden Dome’s program manager, described how the system’s command and control would work. In peacetime, he said, it can be “100% human-in-the-loop.” As the threat accelerates, “we can move more and more toward more and more automation.” Golden Dome must make decisions at machine speed. Which interceptor takes which missile, which are left for later tiers, and which apparent launches are decoys or debris becomes the laser’s assignment problem scaled by a thousand, compressed into seconds, with no time for a human decision on each shot. Both statements were received as news about weapons. They were really news about decisions, marking the moment Golden Dome stopped being an argument about whether and became an argument about how. We have followed that argument through this series: in May, we argued that strategy is easy and logistics is hard; in June, that how the shield is financed will shape what gets built; in July, that the arsenal will have new, largely private owners; and most recently, that a glacier collapse in Nepal, watched by satellites from four countries and still unwarned, shows the layer between the camera and the person at risk is the layer Golden Dome most needs and has least examined. This article is about that layer, and about what it will take for the industry expected to build Golden Dome to build it. Let us be clear. Golden Dome is the right program. The threat is real. An architecture with sensing and the first interceptor tier in orbit is the only one that can engage early enough to matter. And the three-year compression ordered in January 2025 is a feature, not a flaw. What follows is offered by two people who want the program to succeed and think its hardest problem is being under-described. What the recent past teaches Three episodes show what happens when the decision layer fails. In December 2023, drones overflew Joint Base Langley-Eustis on 17 consecutive nights; the base detected them but could not establish intent, and no one held the authority to act. On January 28, 2024, a one-way attack drone struck Tower 22 in Jordan, killing three soldiers and wounding more than 40, after arriving as a friendly drone was returning; no interceptor was fired. In the Red Sea, warships defeated hundreds of Houthi drones with interceptors costing a hundred times more than the targets and lost the exchange while winning every engagement. Authority, discrimination, and assignment: three failures, all after detection. The companies expected to build Golden Dome are more ready than the public debate suggests, and more constrained than it recognizes. Directed energy can improve the cost exchange, but it makes the decision problem even sharper. A laser engages one target at a time, must dwell for seconds, and cannot be re-tasked until that engagement is complete. Consider FIREFLY, the palletized counter-drone laser KBR’s Kord Technologies unveiled at AUSA in 2024, which scales from 5 to 40 kilowatts and can be cued by FAAD, MEDUSA, and standalone radars. Its specification describes what it can detect, track, and defeat, but not what it should engage first. Which target it engages first, and which it leaves to another effector, is decided upstream, by whatever sits on the arrow between sensor and shooter. The effector is ready but it’s the decision architecture that makes it effective or not. Now move that problem to orbit. A space-based interceptor is also a single-shot effector with a narrow window; it can reach a boosting missile only while the missile is under thrust and only when its orbit brings it within range. In a large-scale attack, hundreds of launches will be detectable and targetable by multiple interceptors. Which interceptor takes which missile, which are left for later tiers, and which apparent launches are decoys or debris becomes the laser’s assignment problem scaled by a thousand, compressed into seconds, with no time for a human decision on each shot. Langley, Tower 22, and the Red Sea were the rehearsal, and Golden Dome is the performance. Machine speed is a policy, not a setting General Guetlein’s description of scalable automation is correct as far as it goes: no human chain of command can act on thousands of tracks in the time a hypersonic attack allows. But “as the threat accelerates, we move toward automation” describes a slider without deciding who moves it. Who decides the threat has accelerated? Which engagements does the system then take on its own, and which does it refuse? What happens when a track looks like a launch but also like a debris event, or when an adversary has learned what moves the slider? These are questions of authority as much as engineering, questions nuclear command and control has confronted for 70 years and resolved through doctrine and law, not software. Israel’s Home Front Command offers a useful model: a radar detection can trigger a warning in seconds with no human in the chain because the rules were written in advance and rehearsed against thousands of real launches. Golden Dome’s space tier will need the same discipline: rules written in advance for a machine in orbit and exercised long before they are needed. What industry is waiting for Here the view from inside industry matters, because the companies expected to build Golden Dome are more ready than the public debate suggests, and more constrained than it recognizes. They are ready. The Missile Defense Agency’s SHIELD contract, a ten-year vehicle with a $151 billion ceiling, has qualified more than 2,400 companies, ranging from the largest primes to startups. The Space Force has put 12 companies on agreements worth up to $3.2 billion to prototype space-based interceptors by 2028. The industrial base has been mobilized at a scale without precedent in missile defense, and industry has answered. They are also constrained because of four reasons anyone who has sat in a capture meeting this year will recognize. First, a seat is not a task. SHIELD gives 2,400 companies the right to compete, but it does not tell them what will be competed or when. A prime cannot staff a team against a ceiling, only against a requirement. Second, the awards so far have bought things that can be photographed: interceptors, buses, launch. Search those awards for the rule connecting sensor to shooter, the model that rehearses it, or the test that proves it, and none appears. The government has bought the “eyes” and is buying the shooters. It has not yet bought the decision. Third, the program has warned that a fiscal 2027 impasse could halt it. No company will build a decision architecture on its own money against a program that may stop in October. Fourth, the seam itself is the problem. The decision layer touches every contractor’s data and every effector’s envelope, and no single prime should own it. Left to one provider, it becomes a single point of failure and a source of leverage over the government. It gets built only if the government specifies the decision layer as an open-interface component and assigns integration to a vendor-neutral integrator whose job is to make everyone else’s hardware work together. That is precisely what the systems engineering and integration contractors on SHIELD exist to do. They are waiting for the requirement. What the decision link would contain Four things must exist before the first interceptor is fielded. None of them are hardware. All are capabilities the Missile Defense Agency and the Space Force already buy through existing contracting vehicles. What is missing is not a contractor, but a requirement. Congress could add one requirement at no additional cost: no funds may be obligated for interceptor procurement until the program delivers to the defense committees a description of the decision architecture. The first is pre-delegated engagement authority, written down for each tier in terms an operator can apply and a court can read. The second is rules of engagement settled and approved before the system is fielded, not improvised in the fight. The third is a rehearsal regime. The White Sands tests were designed, in Lieutenant General Brian Gibson’s words, to validate “sensor-to-shooter linkages.” That word matters. A linkage is a wire; a wire cannot decide. Two live tests a year prove only that the wire carries data. Proving the decision is right requires exercising it far more often than live tests allow, under independent scrutiny, before anyone trusts it with a live shot. Live tests prove the plumbing; simulation proves the judgment. The fourth is an open interface paired with a public account of who holds authority, what triggers its delegation, and what the system will never do on its own. The line Congress could add When the fiscal 2027 appropriation is written, Congress could add one requirement at no additional cost: no funds may be obligated for interceptor procurement until the program delivers to the defense committees a description of the decision architecture, meaning the engagement authorities at each tier, the conditions for their delegation, the limits placed on its behavior, and the exercise regime that validates its behavior. Every item is work the program must produce anyway and work the contractors already on its rosters can perform once asked. Specify the decision, then buy the shooters. It would also give industry what it has lacked since the SHIELD awards: a requirement to build against. The satellites will be the visible part. The interceptors will be the expensive part. But the decision between them will determine whether either was worth buying. It is also the one part that can be designed, tested, and proven before the first hostile launch. Sensor-to-shooter is not a wire, on the ground or in orbit. It is a decision. Industry is ready to build it. The government must now define it. Bharath Gopalaswamy, PhD, is an aerospace engineer and space security scholar and a Senior Fellow at the National Spacepower Center. Daniel Dant is a retired US Air Force colonel, a Senior Fellow at the National Spacepower Center, and Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at KBR, where he leads the company’s Golden Dome pursuit. The views are the authors’ own. This is the fifth article in their Golden Dome series for The Space Review.

Space Situational Awareness In Southeast Asia

radar site A space tracking radar site being developed by the US, UK, and Australia in Western Australia. (credit: Apache Drone Photography) Space situational awareness in Southeast Asia by Iuna Tsyrulneva Monday, October 26, 2026 In recent years, orbits have become more crowded as large constellations and frequent launches have added many new satellites, which now number more than 14,000 as of earlier this year.[1] Moreover, the European Space Agency estimates that 40,000 of pieces of space debris larger than ten centimeters are being actively tracked,[2] with far more debris being too small to track reliably. Effective SSA requires a mix of sensor information and robust data fusion so that gaps in one modality are compensated for by another. This means that satellite operators have a greater need to avoid collisions that threaten operational continuity for communications, navigation, weather, and disaster monitoring services. Avoiding collisions may also necessitate performing close-approach maneuvers and other activities such as on-orbit servicing and inspection, which blur the line between commercial operations and military intent. The strategic implications of crowded orbits are seen in two recent examples. In November 2025, China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft that was docked with the Tiangong space station suffered viewport micro-cracking that was attributed to debris.[3] This prompted China’s first emergency return mission via an uncrewed Shenzhou vehicle that evacuated its astronauts safely. Similarly, in January 2026, ground observers reported the partial disintegration of Russia’s retired spy Luch/Olymp satellite in a graveyard orbit above the geostationary (GEO) belt, possibly due to impact from space debris [4]. The extent of avoidance operations by satellite operators is evident from the American commercial space company SpaceX reporting that its Starlink satellites executed nearly 50,000 collision‑avoidance maneuvers over a six‑month period from December 2023 to May 2024,[5] illustrating how the day‑to‑day workload of avoiding space debris is rising as orbits become more crowded. In this context, space situational awareness (SSA) makes detection, tracking, identification, and characterization of objects in space (active satellites, defunct satellites, rocket bodies, and debris) possible. It also facilitates predicting whether and when objects in space might come close to each other or re‑enter the atmosphere, informing operators about what is in orbit; and how to predict risky close approaches, thereby enabling them to act early to prevent accidents and interruptions. SSA reduces ambiguity by improving attribution: who moved, how, and whether the behavior is routine or threatening. Technologies used in SSA SSA comprises sensors to observe objects and analytics to turn observations into predictions and alerts. SSA sensors can be grouped by where they are located (ground or orbit) and what they “see” (radar/radiofrequency [RF] technology or optical). Table 1 below summarizes the main technology families, their strengths, limits, and examples. Effective SSA requires a mix of sensor information and robust data fusion so that gaps in one modality are compensated for by another. For example, ground‑based optical SSA is limited by atmospheric phenomena and observation geometry, which can degrade detection and positional accuracy. However, data collected by space-based optical sensors can complement ground-based SSA to maintain coverage and accuracy. The US-Japan QZSS‑6 [16] hosted payload launched in 2025 illustrates how one sensor stream is designed to fill gaps in others, as it will support the fusion of space‑ and ground‑based space domain awareness and feed near‑real‑time data into the Space Surveillance Network, improving the United States Space Force’s ability to detect, characterize, and attribute unusual maneuvers or close approaches that could signal counterspace activity. According to the US Space Force, this mission is the first bilateral US-Japan national-security space cooperation that is strategically important because it links Japan’s regional GNSS infrastructure with US space-domain-awareness needs. The global SSA landscape The organizational landscape for SSA is best understood as three overlapping layers: international bodies that set norms and coordination mechanisms, states that operate or sponsor core tracking networks and public warning services, and a fast‑growing private sector that supplies sensors, analytics, and operational data. Globally, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) provides guidance on long-term sustainability through the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), covering regulatory approaches, operational safety, cooperation, and capacity‑building, laying the foundation for responsible behavior. UNOOSA promotes international cooperation in the peaceful use and exploration of outer space, including the use of space science and technology for sustainable economic and social development. It helps UN Member States build space law, policy, and regulatory frameworks. Table 1. Main strengths and limitations of SSA technologies Sensor type Best at Key strengths Key limitations Examples Radar (RF) Low Earth Orbit (LEO) debris monitoring and fast updates Works day and night and through clouds, good for small objects Expensive, limited by geography and line-of-sight US Space Fence [6] (Kwajalein) improves detection of small objects in LEO; Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability [7] (DARC) (Western Australia) provides GEO monitoring coverage Optical telescopes GEO object detection High-precision angles, useful for GEO and object characterization Needs clear skies and dark conditions. Weather conditions and light pollution reduce performance Space Surveillance Telescope [8], Western Australia; Japan’s Bisei Spaceguard Centre [9]; Korea’s OWL‑Net [10] - a global robotic telescope network Optical cameras GEO belt watch and maneuver detection Not limited by weather, flexible viewing geometry Limited aperture on small satellites, downlink constraints US Space Based Space Surveillance [11] (SBSS); US ORS‑5 SensorSat [12] for GEO; China’s EYESAT [13] for LEO RF receivers (passive) Tracking emitters and early maneuver cues Can detect and locate transmitting spacecraft over wide areas Cannot detect non‑emitting debris. attribution and spectrum policy issues Space-based RF SSA remains an active research area Data fusion & orbit analytics Turning measurements into decisions Combines many sensors, produces conjunction, reentry, breakup products Quality depends on input data and standards EU SST service [14] portfolio, NASA Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis [15] (CARA) driven by 18 Space Defence Squadron (SDS) The Inter‑Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) is the core technical coordination forum among major space agencies. Its debris‑mitigation guidelines provide widely used best practices on limiting debris release and avoiding collisions, underpinning many national rules and standards. For example, IADC Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines cover measures such as limiting debris released during normal operations, minimizing on-orbit breakups, preventing collisions, and planning post-mission disposal. Major global players have a lot of similarities in defining SSA and assigning operational providers. For example, the EU frames SSA in a service-oriented way through the EU Space Surveillance and Tracking (EU SST) initiative, focusing on collision avoidance, reentry assessment, and fragmentation analysis, emphasizing safety and sustainability. The EU SST also positions itself as a key operational capability for Europe’s emerging approach to space traffic management. Meanwhile, the United States has historically emphasized spaceflight safety and catalog maintenance. The US Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS) commands and controls the Space Surveillance Network, catalogs objects, and runs a SSA data‑sharing program that distributes tracking data to a wide range of partners. NASA’s Conjunction Assessment and Risk Analysis (CARA) safety protocol for space operations is also supported by routine screenings performed by the 18th SDS. Japan’s approach is split between a civilian technical track and a defense operations track. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) describes SSA as monitoring debris, maintaining orbit catalogs, analyzing close approaches, and predicting re‑entries, supported by radar, optical telescopes, and an analysis system. In parallel, Japan’s Ministry of Defense established a Space Operations Squadron with a mission to operate an SSA system to monitor debris and suspicious satellites and to cooperate closely with the United States. Across Southeast Asia, SSA is slowly moving from a niche concern to a practical priority, mainly because regional economies depend on satellite communications, weather monitoring, navigation, and disaster response. Opposite to public service-oriented systems like EU SST, Russia’s SSA activities are less transparent internationally and appear to be integrated with military space surveillance and national-security functions. Russia hosts a dual military-civil architecture: a military Space Control System associated with Russian Space Forces and Roscosmos-linked civilian Automated Warning System on Hazardous Situations in Outer Space (ASPOS OKP). Russian military SSA tasks include detecting, tracking, cataloging, identifying, and characterizing orbital objects, monitoring foreign orbital groups, predicting re-entries, and warning of potentially dangerous approaches to Russian spacecraft. ASPOS OKP supports spaceflight safety through conjunction assessment, fragmentation analysis, reentry prediction, and monitoring of high-orbit objects. India has formalized SSA through a space sustainability lens. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) System for Safe and Sustainable Space Operations Management (IS4OM) coordinates SSA activities, including close-approach risk assessment, uncontrolled re-entry prediction, space-object population monitoring, and compliance with international long-term sustainability guidelines. India also performs routine Collision Avoidance Analysis (COLA) and Collision Avoidance Maneuvers (CAMs) for its satellites and launch vehicles. Moving from an ISRO-centered SSA model toward a broader national SSA ecosystem involving private and academic entities, India started developing SSA regulation for non-governmental actors. China has focused on building dedicated organizations for debris monitoring and data applications. The China National Space Administration’s Space Debris Observation and Data Application Centre supports tracking and monitoring of near‑Earth objects. However, there is limited publicly available information on Chinese SSA activities, which is itself an important gap for regional interoperability. Industry and operator consortia are also increasingly indispensable because they collect and store high‑precision data. The Space Data Association (SDA) is an operator-led organization that pools operational data to improve conjunction assessment and enable better space traffic coordination among members. Similarly, Privateer’s Wayfinder provides near real-time visualization and tracking of satellites and debris, making space traffic information more accessible to a growing space community through the partnership with the International Space Station National Lab based in the United States. Commercial SSA firms such as LeoLabs and ExoAnalytic Solutions run sensor networks and provide operator services that complement government systems. The contribution of private companies is not limited only to on-the-ground activities. NorthStar, for example, launched the first satellites of a commercial space-based SSA service providing continuous monitoring for maneuvers, anomalies, and conjunction warnings in LEO, Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) and GEO. Private companies occupy an important niche in SSA by increasingly filling the capability and data gaps, improving coordination, and facilitating public access to information. The current state of SSA in Southeast Asia Across Southeast Asia (SEA), SSA is slowly moving from a niche concern to a practical priority, mainly because regional economies depend on satellite communications, weather monitoring, navigation, and disaster response. Table 2 provides a compact, non-exhaustive snapshot of publicly documented SSA-related activities in selected SEA countries. Based on the analyzed sources, SEA space agencies choose partners mainly to obtain (1) neutral convening and shared norms, (2) mature tools and training, and (3) immediate access to trusted tracking data. Singapore’s former OSTIn used SCOSA-linked policy exchanges to convene ASEAN officials with external experts and industry, consistent with Singapore’s stated strategy of shaping rules-based practices and building international partnerships rather than relying solely on local sensor construction. Multistakeholder workshops reflect that SSA challenges exceed the capacity of any single nation, so politically neutral UN bodies are selected as partners to legitimize cooperation and data sharing. SSA training partnerships with JAXA and ESA leverage already established agency tools to build competence quickly. An assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies [22] notes that most Indo‑Pacific countries lean on US, EU, and China for tracking information, which keeps satellites safer but also leaves gaps in access, timeliness, and consistency with data format. In practice, many operators in the region combine alerts from the US public catalog, European collision and reentry services, and industry analytics, then reconcile them by hand: a fragmented approach as the space congestion grows. Table 2. SSA-related activities in selected SEA countries Country / platform What exists today What it is mainly for Key gap or limitation ASEAN / SubCommittee on Space Technology and Applications (SCOSA) Policy exchange and agenda-setting on sustainability and situational awareness [17] Regional coordination and learning Non-binding, needs follow-up on shared procedures and standards Singapore (National Space Agency of Singapore (NSAS)/ Office for Space Technology & Industry (OSTIn)) Convening SCOSA and policy exchanges; issuing national Guidelines for Singapore-related space activities Policy, regulation, and ecosystem building Limited domestic siting for large sensors, depends on partnerships for sensor hosting Thailand (Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA)) ZIRCON space traffic management service [18]; developing GARNET SSA layer and JASPER space weather service Operational safety for national satellites; future regional support Still scaling sensors and automation; immature regional data-sharing mechanisms Philippines (Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA)) SSA training with JAXA and ESA [19]; regional workshop with UNOOSA/GISTDA [20] Capacity building and awareness Limited dedicated sensor infrastructure publicly described Indonesia (National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN)) Debris and space weather monitoring [21] Capacity building through joint projects Limited dedicated sensor infrastructure publicly described For other ASEAN members, publicly available information on dedicated SSA capabilities remains limited, and efforts often appear fragmented across civil, research, and defense stakeholders. This is however explainable: SSA programs are data‑intensive, require sustained funding, and often sit at the intersection of civil safety and national security. Barriers and advantages in Singapore to developing native SSA capabilities Singapore’s dense urban planning and limited land make it challenging to host large radars or wide-baseline optical telescopes. ASEAN states in drier climates and latitudes offer superior sites. This difference suggests a “distributed hardware, centralized analytics” model. Here, partner countries host sensors where geography is favorable, while Singapore focuses on being an analytics and connectivity hub, providing the service of standardizing data formats, fusing multiple catalogues, and coordinating procedures across operators. This mirrors Singapore’s strengths in systems integration and managing complex high‑reliability operations, such as ports and aviation. In practice, many operators in the region combine alerts from the US public catalog, European collision and reentry services, and industry analytics, then reconcile them by hand: a fragmented approach as the space congestion grows. Dependence on multiple providers from military, governmental, and commercial sectors, sometimes with inconsistent orbit predictions and alerts, complicates understanding the space environment and slows down the response by regional actors. The World Economic Forum published SSA data-sharing principles,[23] highlighting transparency in sharing public and private space data. Singapore can posit itself as a SSA Data Exchange Hub that brokers operator-provided information about spacecraft with public and commercial catalogs. To make such a hub credible, Singapore would need (1) clear domestic procedures for reporting spacecraft status changes and safety-relevant events, (2) trusted cross‑border data-sharing arrangements, and (3) a focus on data governance and interoperability. Singapore published in 2024 Guidelines for Singapore-Related Space Activities [24] that established spacecraft registration and safety reporting. However, everyday procedures, such as how to share planned maneuvers, how fast to respond to close-approach threats, and what to publish for reentries, remain undefined. Inspired by the busy automated port network in Singapore, which owns its digital twin for simulating complex activities, Singapore can adopt a similar approach to tracking space operations. Conclusion With Earth’s orbits becoming more congested, raising the risk of service disruption for communications, navigation, weather and disaster response, operators are forced to spend more resources on collision avoidance. SSA, built on a mix of sensors and robust data fusion, turns observations into timely collision, reentry, and anomaly warnings, reducing ambiguity as dual-use behavior grows. Globally, SSA is shaped by UN norms, state operational providers, and an expanding commercial sector. In SEA, progress is uneven: Thailand is operationalizing SSA tools, the Philippines is building skills, and Singapore is best positioned today as a trusted regional analytics and data-exchange hub. Acknowledgment. This paper has been developed with the support of and guidance from Manoj Harjani, Research Fellow and Coordinator of Military Transformations Programme, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. References CelesTrak. “CelesTrak.” Accessed September 2, 2026. European Space Agency. “ESA Space Environment Report 2025.” April 1, 2025. Wall, Mike. “China Launches Uncrewed Shenzhou Capsule for Three Astronauts Stuck on Tiangong Space Station.” Space.com, November 24, 2025. Jones, Andrew. “Russian ‘Inspector’ Satellite Appears to Break Apart in Orbit, Raising Debris Concerns.” Space.com, January 30, 2026. Space.com. “SpaceX Starlink Satellites Made 50,000 Collision-Avoidance Maneuvers in the Past Six Months.” Accessed September 2, 2026. Lockheed Martin. “Space Fence: The World’s Most Advanced Radar.” Accessed September 2, 2026. Sodders, Lisa. “Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability Makes Tremendous Progress in First Year.” United States Space Force, February 20, 2025. Majumdar, Oishee. “Australia’s Space Surveillance Telescope Attains Final Operational Capability.” Janes, August 21, 2025. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. “Bisei Space Guard Center.” Accessed September 2, 2026. National Space Situational Awareness Organization. “OWL-Net: Optical Wide Field Patrol Network.” Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. Accessed September 2, 2026. United States Space Force. “Space Based Space Surveillance.” Fact sheet, October 2020. eoPortal. “ORS-5 (Operationally Responsive Space-5).” Last modified April 11, 2017. CGTN. “Space Traffic Management: China Unveils Next-Generation Space Situational Awareness Constellation to Guard against Space Debris.” November 27, 2025. EU Space Surveillance and Tracking. EU Space Surveillance and Tracking. 2025. NASA. “Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis.” Accessed September 2, 2026. Space Systems Command and Space Operations Command. “U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command and Japan Launch First Bilateral Space Effort.” February 4, 2025. Office for Space Technology and Industry. “OSTIn Hosts 33rd ASEAN Sub-Committee on Space Technology and Applications (SCOSA).” October 11, 2024. Tanirat, Purin, Sittiporn Channumsin, Suwat Sreesawet, Setthanun Thongsuwan, Keerati Puttasuwan, Phasawee Saingyen, Borirak Kitrattana, and Yodyium Tipsuwan. “Enhancing Space Safety and Security: GISTDA’s Integrated Approach to Space Situational Awareness and Traffic Management.” Paper presented at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies Conference, September 16–19, 2025. Philippine Space Agency. “Experts Train Filipinos on Space Situational Awareness.” July 14, 2023. “ASEAN Workshop Advances Regional Cooperation on Space Safety, Traffic Management.” The Manila Times, March 24, 2026. VOI Editorial Team. “BRIN Opens Collaboration Opportunities to Overcome Space Waste.” VOI, August 18, 2025. Barrie, Douglas, Matthew Bint, and Ester Sabatino. Enabling Responsible Space Behaviours Through Space Situational Awareness. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, April 2025. World Economic Forum. Space Situational Awareness Data and Information Sharing Principles. Geneva: World Economic Forum, September 2024. Office for Space Technology and Industry. Guidelines for Singapore-Related Space Activities. Singapore: Office for Space Technology and Industry, May 2024.. Iuna Tsyrulneva is a Research Fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, working on space AI and space sustainability and looking into military space technology as a personal interest. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

Russian Reliance on Chinese Satellites

SAR satellites Taijing-4-03, a Chinese radar satellite flying under the Russian cover name Okulus-01. Source Flying under the radar: Russia’s tacit reliance on Chinese SAR satellites (part 1) by Bart Hendrickx Monday, October 12, 2026 Russia currently operates only a handful of government-owned radar imaging satellites, prompting several private startups to step in to fill this gap in the domestic remote sensing market. To secure these capabilities, many of these entities have discreetly turned to China’s commercial space industry. This low-profile cooperation is unfolding across three distinct levels: white-labeling orbiting Chinese satellites under Russian cover names, engineering domestic satellite buses to house imported Chinese radar payloads, and actively marketing Chinese radar imagery to Russian state and commercial consumers. The current status of Russian radar satellites Only three Roscosmos radar satellites are currently operational: Kondor-FKA-1 and Kondor-FKA-2 (launched in May 2023 and November 2024) and Obzor-R (launched in December 2025). The Kondor satellites rely on mechanically deployable S-band radars. Obzor-R, transmitting in the X-band, is the first Russian radar satellite to be equipped with an active phased array antenna. While officially billed as purely civilian remote sensing assets, all three platforms probably also support military intelligence requirements. Last year’s launch of Obzor-R was heavily shrouded in secrecy and not publicly acknowledged by Roscosmos until recently. Statements made by corporate executives last year indicated that the home-built Okulus was not expected to fly until 2028 at the earliest. It therefore came as a complete surprise when clear indications emerged last April that the deployment of the first operational satellite was imminent. The Russian military currently operates a single radar satellite under the official name Kosmos-2550. Internally known as Pion, it is a specialized ocean reconnaissance satellite designed to accurately pinpoint the location of military vessels. Although officially declared operational by Russia in November 2022, high-resolution ground-based photographs of the satellite strongly suggest that one of its two radar antennas failed to deploy. [1] No follow-on satellite is expected to be launched in the near future. Meanwhile, work has been underway for over a decade on a separate series of military X-band radar satellites called Araks-R, but the project has suffered numerous delays and has still not seen a single launch. Many of these delays are likely caused by Western sanctions that have hampered the import of radiation-hardened microelectronics, which are critical, among other things, for the assembly of advanced synthetic aperture radar payloads. Novyy Kosmos’ Okulus project One of the private companies aiming to compensate for the lack of radar satellites is Moscow-based Novyy Kosmos (“New Space”), a startup founded in October 2021 which has been working on a radar satellite called Okulus. Some basic details regarding the platform are available from the company’s public website and promotional materials. The spacecraft weighs 448 kilograms and is intended to operate in a 97.2° inclination Sun-synchronous orbit at an average altitude of 475 kilometers. Its X-band radar operates within the 9.3–9.8 gigahertz range and is advertised to produce images with resolutions of 2 meters in spotlight mode, 5 meters in stripmap mode, and 20 meters in ScanSAR mode. Confusingly, the company’s website also lists a 0.4-meter maximum spatial resolution alongside an additional Ku-band radar capability. [2] SAR satellites Basic parameters of Okulus on the Novyy Kosmos website. Source SAR satellites Model of Okulus. Source The stated goals of Okulus are to provide all-weather, high-resolution radar monitoring of critical linear infrastructure, including oil and gas pipelines, power lines, and railways. Utilizing advanced synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferometry, the platform is designed to track ground subsidence under these structures with a precision of up to 5 millimeters, while also monitoring quarries and metallic accumulations. Furthermore, it serves vital civil and environmental functions, including flood and forest fire management, agricultural optimization, and mapping ice dynamics along the Northern Sea Route. Company officials have frequently emphasized that 80% of the satellite’s components will be manufactured within Russia—a crucial asset in an industry heavily restricted by Western sanctions. Novyy Kosmos aims to field a constellation of three Okulus satellites. A technical schematic displayed during an interview with the company’s CEO Anton Alekseyev two years ago suggests that plans have been considered to launch all three spacecraft simultaneously aboard a single Soyuz-2 carrier rocket equipped with a Fregat upper stage. SAR satellites Soyuz-2 payload shroud configured to house three Okulus satellites. Source The surprise launch of Okulus Statements made by corporate executives last year indicated that the home-built Okulus was not expected to fly until 2028 at the earliest. Some early private funding had been secured for the project (expected to cost 1 billion rubles or roughly $11.5 million), while engineering designs for the satellite's radar were reportedly being finalized. [3] It therefore came as a complete surprise to observers when clear indications emerged last April that the deployment of the first operational satellite was imminent. On April 12, just a day after Roscosmos chief Dmitriy Bakanov explicitly mentioned Novyy Kosmos during a high-profile meeting with President Vladimir Putin, the company’s chairman, Dmitriy Matsuk, noted on the company’s social media platform that the firm was “getting down to on-orbit flight tests of its first commercial radar satellite.” [4] On the same day, a blog post by Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin highlighting the city's commercial space sector revealed that Okulus would be placed into orbit later that month. [5] The document reveals that Novyy Kosmos is actively offering data from two operational Okulus satellites already in orbit. Following this announcement, no further updates surfaced until mid-June, when Matsuk was quoted on the company's website confirming that the first satellite had indeed been successfully launched in April and was undergoing the in-orbit tests necessary for “the further development of the company’s products in the field of radar imaging.” [6] Curiously, Matsuk’s statement went entirely unnoticed and was not picked up by any mainstream Russian media outlets. In a news report published on the company’s website in late July, Novyy Kosmos CEO Anton Alekseyev sowed confusion by describing Okulus as a project "under development." Contradicting this statement, however, the report was accompanied by a high-resolution radar image of a sports stadium credited to a satellite called Okulus-01. [7] SAR satellites Radar picture credited to Okulus-01. Source Okulus was showcased again during a presentation given by an official from Russia’s Ministry of Emergency Situations in early September. Speaking about the ministry’s use of satellite data obtained by private companies, he displayed high-resolution radar strips of Russia’s Arctic region and the southwestern Volgograd region captured by Okulus in early and late June 2026. [8] SAR satellites Pictures taken by Okulus in June 2026. Source Finally, during a meeting with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on September 22, Roscosmos chief Dmitriy Bakanov officially confirmed that the Okulus satellite had been successfully orbited earlier in the year and was actively furnishing radar data to several federal executive agencies. Novyy Kosmos officials responded enthusiastically on their corporate platform, framing the launch as a major milestone for Russia’s private space sector and underlining that its imagery would serve both government and commercial clients. [9] All these public disclosures presented analysts with a conundrum. Announcements from both Novyy Kosmos and Roscosmos claimed a satellite named Okulus was deployed in April and delivering active data within months, despite statements by the company last year that the first flight was not expected until 2028. Furthermore, no satellite officially bearing the name Okulus had been placed into orbit in April. The most obvious explanation was that Okulus was tucked inside a cluster of six unnamed military satellites launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome on April 16 by a Soyuz-2 rocket with a Volga upper stage. Registered by US Space Command as Kosmos-2609 to 2614, five of these payloads triggered intense Western scrutiny in mid-May when they executed high-energy maneuvers to lock themselves into orbits that were nearly coplanar with those of the Finnish-American radar satellites ICEYE-X36 and X37. [10] ICEYE has provided radar data to support Ukraine’s armed forces in the war against Russia, raising speculation that the five Russian satellites might be on an inspection mission or have some type of anti-satellite capability. Possibly, Okulus was the sixth satellite, hitching a ride into an orbit far away from that of the ICEYE satellites. The Chinese connection of Okulus The Okulus story took a new turn when Novyy Kosmos recently released an updated user guide for customers wishing to purchase customized remote sensing data. Published inconspicuously on the company’s platform, the document reveals that Novyy Kosmos is actively offering data from two operational Okulus satellites already in orbit. The first, named Okulus-01, carries a Ku-band radar operating at a center frequency of 13.5 gigahertz. The second, named Okulus-02, houses an X-band radar transmitting at a center frequency of 9.6 gigahertz with an expansive 1,200 megahertz maximum signal bandwidth. The guide details a specialized processing service that enables customers to use these radar datasets to automatically detect and measure marine oil spills. [11] The following performance characteristics are given for the two satellites: Okulus-01(Ku-band) Mode Resolution Ground swath Sliding spotlight 1 0.5 m 5x5 km Sliding spotlight 2 0.5 m 20x10 km Stripmap 2 m 15 km ScanSAR 18-20 m 150 km Okulus-02 (X-band) Mode Resolution Ground swath Spotlight 0.5m 3x3 km Sliding spotlight 1 0.5 m 8x20 km Sliding spotlight 2 0.5 m 10x30 km Sliding spotlight 3 1 m 10x100 km Stripmap 2.5 m 25 km ScanSAR 1 7 m 45 km ScanSAR 2 15-20 m 100 km At the time the document was compiled, Okulus-01 was operational and supplying commercial data, while Okulus-02 was still undergoing in-orbit check-outs. Imagery from the second satellite was expected to become available for customers on August 1, 2026. Okulus-01 and 02 are in orbits with an average altitude of 530 and 535 kilometers respectively. They both have an inclination of 97.5° and cross the descending nodes of their orbits at 10:30 am local time. Closer analysis leaves no doubt that Okulus-01 is, in fact, a radar satellite built and launched by China on January 23, 2024, under the name Taijing-4-03. The orbital parameters detailed in the guide make it clear that Okulus-01 and 02 were not among the satellites launched from Plesetsk on April 16. The military payloads are in slightly higher orbits with more elevated inclinations. In addition to that, they cross the descending nodes of their orbits in the mid-afternoon, whereas the Okulus satellites do so in the mid-morning. Neither are there any other unidentified Russian satellites launched in recent months that match the orbital elements given for the two Okulus satellites. Closer analysis leaves no doubt that Okulus-01 is, in fact, a radar satellite built and launched by China on January 23, 2024, under the name Taijing-4-03. Manufactured by Beijing Weina Star Technology (better known by its international name MinoSpace), it is the world’s first commercial Ku-band SAR satellite. Only two other Ku-band radar satellites have been launched since—specifically China’s Airsat-01 (Zhongke-01) and Airsat-02 (Zhongke-02) in September 2024—but these were inserted into slightly lower dawn-dusk orbits with a Local Time of Descending Node (LTDN) of 6:00 am. Taijing-4-03 is a highly compact, ultra-thin flat-panel radar satellite. Utilizing an 80-kilogram active phased array antenna measuring 3.6x0.6 meters, it is based on Minospace’s MN200S platform and has an overall mass of 230 kilograms. SAR satellites Taijing 4-03. Source: Minospace. The orbital parameters published for Okulus-01 in the Novyy Kosmos user guide perfectly match those of Taijing-4-03 following its launch in January 2024. Catalogued by US Space Command as Object 2024-016D (NORAD number 58823), the satellite has not executed any orbital corrections since its deployment and has consequently decayed from the original 530 kilometers altitude down to approximately 385 kilometers. This has compressed the satellite’s ground footprint, which could explain why some of the swath widths and spatial resolutions marketed for Okulus-01 slightly differ from Taijing-4-03’s factory specifications seen below. [12] SAR satellites Radar performance data for Taijing-4-03. Source Less than two months after the launch of Taijing-4-03, MinoSpace released a sharp Ku-band capture of US Navy aircraft carriers moored at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia. Although Novyy Kosmos executives have never openly acknowledged their ties with MinoSpace, they explicitly praised the aircraft carrier tracking capability of Taijing-3-04 in a paper on China’s remote sensing industry published in November 2025. More particularly, they singled out the platform's integrated, spaceborne AI processors that enable such automatic, real-time monitoring. [13] SAR satellites US Navy aircraft carriers imaged by Taijing-4-03. Source: Minosat. Okulus-02, an X-band radar satellite, is almost certainly a cover name for another Chinese satellite, but its identification is not as straightforward. There are four Chinese commercial X-band radar satellites launched after Taijing-4-03 that have been placed into an orbit corresponding to that of Okulus-02: Taijing-4-02A (built by MinoSpace), launched on May 21, 2025 Dongpo-16 (built by MinoSpace), launched on March 16, 2026 Juntian-1-04A (built by Beijing Juntian Space Technology), launched on March 16, 2026 Dianjian-1/Tianyi-50 (built by Spacety), launched on May 15, 2026 Chinese sources offer only baseline radar operating parameters for these platforms, making it impossible to positively identify any of them as Okulus-02. Taijing-4-02A and Dianjian-1 can likely be ruled out because their reported maximum swath widths of 240 kilometers significantly exceed the tighter 100-kilometer limit advertised for Okulus-02. Furthermore, Taijing-4-02A is likely to have completed its on-orbit shakedown and commissioning phases long before August 2026, when the second Okulus was declared operational. This leaves Dongpo-16 and Juntian-1-04A—launched together in March 2026—as the most probable candidates. Both feature a maximum spatial resolution of 0.5 meters that matches the specifications published for Okulus-02. To date, only a single swath width has been publicly disclosed for these platforms, namely “more than 25 kilometers” for Dongpo-16, which closely aligns with the parameters marketed for Okulus-02 in stripmap mode. Between the two, Dongpo-16 is a significantly more plausible candidate because it is built on the exact same MinoSpace MN200S satellite bus as Taijing-4-03 (Okulus-01). From a corporate procurement standpoint, Novyy Kosmos is far more likely to have secured a multi-satellite agreement with a single Chinese partner than with two competing manufacturers. SAR satellites Juntian-1-04A. Source: Juntian Space Technology. SAR satellites Dongpo-16. Source: MinoSpace MinoSpace is no newcomer to cooperative ventures with the Russian space industry. There is strong evidence that at least two of its high-resolution optical remote sensing satellites are actively being operated by the Russian defense contractor Stilsoft under the pseudonym Stilsat-1. These platforms, Taijing-3-02 and Taijing-3-04, were orbited together with Taijing-4-03 and Taijing-4-02A, respectively. While the exact commercial details of the arrangement between Stilsoft and MinoSpace remain unknown, Stilsoft maintains its own ground station infrastructure to command the satellites and downlink imagery. This independent operational capability strongly indicates that the assets have been turned over to the Russian firm on a complete turnkey basis. [14] SAR satellites Taijing-3-02 and Taijing-4-03 prior to launch. Source Whether this turnkey operational model also applies to Okulus-01 and Okulus-02 remains unclear. The possibility cannot be entirely ruled out for Taijing-4-03, which has no publicly identified anchor customers within the Chinese domestic remote sensing market. Conversely, Dongpo-16 and Juntian-1-04A were explicitly ordered from their respective manufacturers by domestic Chinese enterprises for localized remote sensing applications. Dongpo-16 forms part of a planned 20-satellite hybrid radar and optical constellation operated by Huantian Smart Technology. For this specific spacecraft, the operator teamed up with a regional partner, Xingyuan Space, to dedicate a portion of the platform's data capacity to the Jinjiang district of the city of Chengdu in southwestern China. This is why the satellite also bears the alternative name Jinjiang Xingyuan. Proving its domestic utility, Dongpo-16 was one of several satellites of the constellation to image the aftermath of the catastrophic glacier collapse on the China-Nepal border in August 2026. Meanwhile, Juntian-1-04A (also known by the alternative names Tianzhu-1 and Hawkview-1) is the first satellite in a planned SAR constellation operated by Dongfang Zhiyuan, which officially assumed operational control of the satellite in late August 2026. By characterizing the launch of Okulus as a domestic accomplishment, Bakanov possibly sought to create the impression that Russia is well on its way to achieving a goal to boost the contribution of private companies to Russia’s space program. If either of these platforms is indeed operating as Okulus-02, Novyy Kosmos cannot be its direct operator. Instead, the firm must have concluded a data-sharing agreement with one or more of these Chinese enterprises to obtain imagery gathered by the satellite during its overflights of Russian territory. Novyy Kosmos appears to have established similar arrangements with other Chinese commercial remote sensing operators. According to its own user guide, the company actively markets customized radar imagery from China’s HiSea-1 satellite, alongside optical datasets captured by the Chinese remote sensing satellite Jilin-1 Gaofen-04 (GF04). Furthermore, Russian customers can order high-resolution imagery obtained via Stilsoft’s Stilsat-1. Other platforms from which Novyy Kosmos routes data to its customers are three Sentinel radar satellites of the European Space Agency as well as an unidentified number of commercial ICEYE satellites. While the Sentinel imagery is available from open-access datasets, the current geopolitical context makes it is absolutely impossible for a Russian company to directly purchase imagery from ICEYE. This can only mean that the ICEYE data is being forwarded to Novyy Kosmos by one or more third parties. One final question is why Novyy Kosmos openly claims to have launched a single Okulus satellite in April 2026 while it is quietly marketing data from two (Chinese-built) Okulus satellites launched in January 2024 and (probably) March 2026. One remote possibility is that one of the six satellites launched from Plesetsk on April 16 is indeed a product of Novyy Kosmos itself, operating in orbit independently from the two Chinese-built satellites. Company officials have given some vague hints that the domestically produced Okulus would be preceded by one or more technology demonstrators carrying only sections of the radar. However, they may also have been referring to tests of these radar sections with the company’s Argos drones. A more likely scenario is that Novyy Kosmos did not launch its own satellite in April at all and is instead gathering data exclusively from the two Chinese satellites through commercial lease agreements. Naturally, any open admission of this would tarnish the reputation of Russia’s domestic space industry, which prides itself on its capability to substitute imported technology. In his meetings with Putin and Mishustin in April and September 2026, Roscosmos chief Bakanov portrayed Novyy Kosmos’ projects as an integral part of a new ten-year national space policy approved by Putin in June last year. This policy aims to boost the contribution of private companies to Russia’s space program from 5% to 35% by 2036. By characterizing the launch of Okulus as a domestic accomplishment, Bakanov possibly sought to create the impression that Russia is well on its way to achieving that goal. The organizational smokescreen even seems to extend to the engineering specifications for the home-built Okulus given on the website of Novyy Kosmos. The 0.4-meter maximum spatial resolution and the additional Ku-band radar capability mentioned there appear to apply only to the Chinese-built satellites, rather than to Novyy Kosmos’ own Okulus satellites. At aerospace exhibitions, Novyy Kosmos’ promotional materials for the home-built hardware present a far more modest capability, restricting the maximum resolution to 2.0 meters and omitting any mention of a Ku-band radar. Even if the Russian-built Okulus eventually makes it into space, it remains doubtful that it will consist of the 80% domestically sourced components officially claimed by the company. Novy Kosmos possesses no prior industrial experience in fabricating 400-kilogram-class satellite buses or radar payloads, and it has kept the identities of its manufacturing partners strictly classified. The active phased array radar planned for the domestic platform demands a vast quantity of highly sophisticated, space-qualified electronic components. Because these microelectronics face stringent Western sanctions blockades and are not mass-produced within the Russian Federation, Novyy Kosmos may well continue to rely on its Chinese partners to incorporate them into the Russian-built platforms. References Post by Austrian satellite watcher Felix Schöfbänker on the SeeSat forum. Okulus page on the Novyy Kosmos website. TASS report, June 17, 2025 ; Interviews with Novyy Kosmos CEO Anton Alekseyev during an exhibition in August 2025 and in Vestnik Glonass magazine, October 16, 2025. Statement by Matsuk on Novyy Kosmos’ social media platform, April 12, 2026. Blog post by Sergei Sobyanin, April 12, 2026. Report on the Novyy Kosmos website, June 17, 2026. Report on the Novyy Kosmos website, July 27, 2026. Video of presentations given during a security conference in Kazan, September 3-5, 2026 (see 3:49:20). Report on the Novyy Kosmos website, September 22, 2026 (includes video of the meeting between Bakanov and Mishustin). G. Gillinger, Is Russia maneuvering to threaten an ICEYE satellite?, Integrity News Flash, May 22, 2026. User guide on the Novyy Kosmos website. W. Yan et al, Design and on-orbit performance of Ku-band phased-array synthetic-aperture radar payload system, MDPI Sensors, October 12, 2024. A. Alekseyev, D. Matsuk, Satellite remote sensing of the Earth: global trends and China’s experience (in Russian), Universum, November 2025. B. Hendrickx, Stilsat-1: a Russian-owned and Chinese-built satellite watching Ukraine, The Space Review, part 1 (November 3, 2025), part 2 (November 10, 2025). Bart Hendrickx is a longtime observer of the Russian space program.