By Karl Grossman, Presented at the Space Tourism: Legal Dimensions Conference, 29 January 2022 The push to turn space into a war zone could spell goodbye to space tourism. The space tourism drive that is underway, led by billionaires Jeff Bezos with his Blue Origin company, Richard Branson and his
By Aaron Bateman, Published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 21 January 2022 As companies and countries clamor to launch satellites and manned spacecraft, space is getting ever more crowded. And because satellites play increasingly important roles in military operations, multiple governments are developing anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons. But debris generated
By Henry Sokolski, Published by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 17 January 2022 Mention military space operations and most people, even sophisticates in Washington, conjure up images of Star Wars: Laser-powered firearms, star fighters and battleships, and cosmic fireball explosions that propel space rubble to infinity and beyond. What’s presumed
By Brian Weedon and Victoria Samson, Published by Scientific American, 14 January 2022 In November, Russia ignited an international uproar with a weapon test that launched an interceptor against a defunct military satellite. When it hit, that deliberate collision shattered the satellite into more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris.
By Douglas Loverro, Brian G. Chow, Brandon W., Kelley, Brian Weedon and Robert Cardillo, Published by Aerospace Security, 11 January 2022 On the 15th anniversary of the first post-Cold War kinetic-energy ASAT test, it’s time for the U.S. to take a stance Over 70 years ago, two RAND researchers structured the
By Brett Tingley, Published by The Drive, 5 January 2022 The previously classified Starfire Optical Range aids astronomers while enabling the Space Force to better detect and track small objects in space. Previously classified adaptive optics technologies enabled the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to capture an image of
By Theresa Hitchens, Pubished by Breaking Defense, 28 December 2021 US leaders this year faced difficult decisions against a backdrop of rapidly growing challenges from potential adversaries, and a booming commercial space sector that innovation-wise is leaving the Defense Department and the Intelligence Community in the dust. WASHINGTON: Saying it
By Theresa Hitchens, Published by Breaking Defense, 27 December 2021 Among all the space action over the past year, AFRL's push to expand military space operations to cislunar space — the vast volume of space between the Earth's outer orbit and that of the Moon — and beyond has been
