February 2021
On the nature of spacepower
... key strategic sites, such as low Earth Orbit, would necessarily attain control over Earth. This is summed up in Dolman’s dictum, “Who controls low-Earth orbit controls near-Earth space. Who controls near-Earth space dominates Terra. Who dominates...
August 2021
Collision avoidance – time for agreement on space sustainability
... starting point for much-needed international cooperation on issues affecting the space environment. A stack of smallsats in low Earth orbit. Ecological paradigm Users of space need to consider the impact of their activities upon the unique and...
September 2023
Getting a grip on space sustainability and space debris
...space as being vast, the bits that we use, particularly the areas around Earth, are actually quite constrained and fragile. Low Earth orbits (LEO), where we find Earth observation satellites and the new broadband range of satellites, is quite a small...
September 2016
URBOCOP: saving planet Earth
... legal groundwork that will help us provide this protection. Low Earth orbit is the most concentrated area for orbital debris with approximately 95 per cent of objects shown here being orbital debris rather than functional satellites. The threat from...
July 2020
Are we entering a post-Overview Effect era?
... virtual reality for example, the world would be a better place. Just as we are reaching the threshold of leaving low Earth orbit to populate the solar system, are we also now entering a ‘post-overview effect world’, in which humanity is increasingly...
September 2020
Tackling space debris - a global priority
... removal strategies. It is estimated that there are around 34,000 trackable objects - larger than 5-10 cm in low Earth orbit (LEO) and 30 cm to 1 m in geostationary orbit (GEO) - and several thousands to millions of non-trackable debris particles...