I vividly remember the Moon landing in 1969. Watching the recent Artemis II capsule splash down, it felt like a moment of déjà vu, the same visuals – be it in a better quality now – the same ocean recovery, almost unchanged after more than half a century. From that perspective, it is tempting to conclude that space itself has evolved only slowly.
But that impression is deeply misleading. While human spaceflight still follows familiar patterns, the space around Earth has been transformed. In the decades since Apollo—and especially over the last ten years—low Earth orbit has filled with thousands of satellites, turning space from an empty frontier into a crowded, contested and rapidly evolving domain.
It is precisely this disconnect between what we see and what is actually happening that sits at the heart of today’s policy challenge. For decades, space policy was built around a simple assumption: access to orbit was rare, expensive, and tightly controlled. That assumption shaped everything from international treaties to spectrum coordination and national licensing regimes. It is now wrong.
Over the past ten years, space has undergone a quiet but profound transformation. Launch has become cheaper, faster, and more accessible. Satellites are smaller, smarter, and deployed in far greater numbers. What was once the preserve of superpowers and defence contractors is now within reach of universities, start-ups, and non-traditional actors.
The problem is not that this transformation is happening. The problem is that governance has not kept up.
From scarcity to abundance in Low Earth Orbit
A decade ago, launching even a small satellite required deep pockets and years of planning. Costs were prohibitive, launch slots were scarce, and regulatory coordination was slow by design. That environment-imposed discipline.
Today, launch costs to low Earth orbit have collapsed. Reusable rockets, commercial launch competition, and higher launch cadence have fundamentally altered the economics. At the same time, access methods have diversified. Air-launch systems, responsive launch platforms, and experimental approaches are expanding who can reach orbit and how quickly they can do so.
The result is a shift from scarcity to abundance. Thousands of satellites are now active in LEO, with many more planned. Deployment timelines that once stretched over years are now measured in months or even weeks.
That speed is economically attractive. It is also politically destabilising.
Regulation built for a slower world
International space coordination still relies heavily on frameworks designed in an era of slow-moving, state-dominated activity. The ITU’s spectrum coordination process assumes advance notice, good-faith compliance, and manageable volumes of satellites.
In practice, that system is under strain.
Commercial operators increasingly treat regulatory filings as parallel processes rather than hard prerequisites. National regulators are forced to balance innovation pressure against coordination obligations. Enforcement is uneven, and penalties are often symbolic compared to commercial incentives.
More troubling is the behaviour of states. Orbital manoeuvres without timely notification, ambiguous satellite missions, and deliberate debris-creating activities all point to a weakening of shared norms. When major powers signal that strategic priorities outweigh collective restraint, smaller actors take note.
This is how rules erode — not through formal abandonment, but through selective disregard.
Space Is now a security domain, not a neutral one
Space systems underpin modern economies and militaries. Navigation, communications, surveillance, weather forecasting, financial timing, and logistics all depend on orbital infrastructure. Disruption in space is no longer abstract; it has immediate terrestrial consequences.
At the same time, the line between civilian and military space assets is increasingly blurred. Dual-use satellites, commercial imagery, and privately operated constellations complicate traditional distinctions between peaceful and hostile activity.
Lower barriers to entry mean that capabilities once limited to a handful of states are now accessible to many more actors — including those with limited accountability. This does not require dramatic weaponisation to be destabilising. Interference, proximity operations, and debris generation are enough.
The strategic risk lies less in deliberate escalation than in miscalculation within an overcrowded and weakly governed environment.
The Governance Gap Is the real threat
The central issue is not technology. It is institutional lag.
Space governance still assumes that coordination can be slow, consensus-driven, and largely voluntary. That assumption is incompatible with rapid launch cycles, commercial competition, and geopolitical rivalry.
History offers a warning. The internet followed a similar trajectory: early openness, explosive growth, delayed governance, and eventual weaponisation of gaps. Space is now on the same path, but with fewer corrective options once damage is done.
The challenge for policymakers is to recognise that maintaining sustainability in orbit now requires active governance, not passive norm-setting. Transparency, enforcement, and accountability must scale with operational reality.
Bottom Line
Cheap and rapid access to space has outpaced the rules designed to manage it. Unless governance frameworks evolve as quickly as launch technology has, space will become not just congested but contested in ways that are harder to reverse. The world has already changed. The only question is whether policy catches up before the consequences do.
Paul Budde