Plus: China's legal warfare in 'near space.'
By Dan Robitzski
Welcome back to our weekly newsletter highlighting the opinions and perspectives of the SpaceNews community.
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 | How space was envisioned 50 years ago. An illustration from the 1970s of a futuristic space colony. Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Don Davis |
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The overall state of the space industry — what we can accomplish in space, how and how far away we can explore, the rules governing space activity — can advance unpredictably and in unpredictable intervals. And while we don't know what the future will bring, there are trends that can be followed to logical endpoints.
That's what Martin Sweeting, distinguished chair in space engineering at the Surrey Space Institute at the University of Surrey, did in an opinion article, originally published in our October 2025 magazine, about the state of the industry in 2075. The article, a summary of a Royal Society study he chaired, suggests that in 50 years, space will be easier to access than ever before, manufacturing and energy production will be taken off-world and deep space exploration will be made safe for humans by autonomous robotic systems that pave the way.
Hubs on the moon, new international treaties and technological advancements could also help us solve important scientific mysteries, Sweeting wrote.
"By 2075, planetary sciences and astrobiology may clarify whether life exists beyond Earth. Discovering related life could reshape our understanding of life's distribution, while an independent origin of life could revolutionize microbiology and applied biology. Conversely, finding no evidence of life would highlight Earth's uniqueness, emphasizing the need to protect its biodiversity and our habitable environment. These outcomes will yield profound scientific and philosophical insights."
Read the rest of the article here. |
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Where does sovereign airspace end and space begin, and is there a boundary in between called near space that blurs legal and geopolitical distinctions? That's what Todd Pennington, senior research fellow for space strategy and policy at National Defense University's Institute of National Strategic Studies, and Cornell University student Emmy Kanarowski explore in a recent opinion article breaking down China's activity and scholarship around near space.
Here's what they had to say:
"When China-aligned sources refer to near space it normalizes the notion that there is a place between air and space in which the rules differ from those of the adjacent domains. This is not true under current law. Is this narrative a knowing misstatement of law, intended as a pretext of legitimacy for Chinese incursions into other states' sovereign airspace? Is it part of an effort to propose a new rule of international law in which near space is a legally distinct place? Is it merely designed to sow confusion and distrust in existing principles of international law? Perhaps, it serves all these purposes."
Read the rest of the article here.
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Managing the data that make space missions possible, whether for satellite communications or deep space exploration, may require new architectures, InfluxData CEO Evan Kaplan wrote in an opinion piece.
He argues that data gathered and analyzed must also account for how that data changes over time. "In aerospace, that means temperatures, voltages, pressure, positioning and thousands of other readings streaming from sensors every second," Kaplan wrote. "These aren't just numbers, but rather the foundation of every mission."
If space operations are to become automated via sophisticated algorithms, those algorithms will need to be able to access and make sense of a firehose of data that accounts for changes over time.
"Only purpose-built time series infrastructure optimized for high ingest and high-cardinality management can deliver the precision required to give a high-resolution picture of what is happening in the real world," Kaplan wrote.
Read the full article here.
SpaceNews is committed to publishing our community's diverse perspectives. Whether you're an academic, executive, engineer or even just a concerned citizen of the cosmos, send your arguments and viewpoints to opinion@spacenews.com to be considered for publication online or in our next magazine. The perspectives shared in these opinion articles are solely those of the authors. |
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