Governing the New Space Race

The first trend, democratization, means space activities are expanding to a growing number of states and nonstate actors, distinguishing this space age from one when two powers—the United States and the Soviet Union— were dominant.1 Democratization2 does not, however, mean that states themselves are displaced.3 For the foreseeable future, states will remain central to the international space saga, often as backers and consumers of space technologies and products, prime architects of strategies and policies, and designers of governance frameworks. The United States, Russia, and Europe remain important. The contemporary difference is the emergence of lesser-known states intent on capturing industrial benefits,4 ranging from independent space powers like Japan, China, and India, to entrants such as Australia, Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, Pakistan, Turkey, and South Africa, to name a few. Many of these states have unilaterally created space agencies.5 Others have capitalized on expertise in a technology, such as Israel with small satellites,6 or staked out regulatory niches, such as Luxembourg on space