View Mission Authorization: Decoding the Space Policy Dilemma By Clayton SwopePublishedJanuary 11, 2024 On November 15, 2023, the White House’s National Space Council released a legislative proposal that would create a licensing process for private sector novel space activities, called mission authorization, consistent with U.S. obligations under the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967. Meanwhile, Congress and a government-chartered space advisory group have offered their own proposals. While all parties acknowledge […]
View The Pitfalls of Labeling Whole Space Missions as Inherently Governmental By Clayton SwopePublishedMarch 12, 2024 The Department of Defense (DOD) will soon release two strategies aimed at harnessing commercial space capabilities for national security needs. Defense officials have said that the strategy to be released by the U.S. Space Force will categorize certain space missions as “inherently governmental,” with mission criticality influencing which missions fall into this group. While well meaning, this approach does […]
View No Place to Hide: A Look into China’s Geosynchronous Surveillance Capabilities By Clayton SwopePublishedJanuary 19, 2024 China launched a remote-sensing satellite called Yaogan-41 into geostationary orbit (GEO) on December 15, 2023. Analysts expect the satellite to settle into a position that would allow continuous surveillance of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as well as Taiwan and Mainland China. Paired with data from other Chinese surveillance satellites, Yaogan-41 could provide China an unprecedented ability […]
View Space Threat Assessment 2024 By Clayton Swope, Kari A. Bingen, Makena Young, Madeleine Chang, Stephanie Songer, Jeremy TammelleoPublishedApril 17, 2024 of Space Threat Assessment by the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). For the last six years, CSIS has used open-source information to produce an annual assessment of threats to U.S. national security space systems posed by foreign government capabilities. Each report in this series catalogs yearly trends, uses, and advancements of counterspace weapons and enablers to […]
View Why Hasn’t Starliner Returned? By Clayton SwopePublishedAugust 19, 2024 On June 5, 2024, an Atlas V rocket launched Boeing’s Starliner on its first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Though it successfully docked with the station, Starliner exhibited anomalies related to its propulsion systems, raising concerns about whether the spacecraft could safely return astronauts to Earth. At the time of writing, NASA […]
View What Can We Learn from Ariane for Future Space Partnerships? By Clayton Swope, Stephanie SongerPublishedJuly 9, 2024 Europe’s new space launcher, Ariane 6, the product of work across 13 European nations, is expected to make its inaugural flight on July 9. The rocket’s pedigree stretches back about fifty years to the start of the Ariane project to develop an all-European launch system. Though critics charged that the Ariane project was unnecessary and expensive, it produced […]
View Is There a Path to Counter Russia’s Space Weapons? By Clayton Swope, Makena YoungPublishedJune 28, 2024 Why would Russia, the first nation to put a satellite and human into orbit, want to develop space weapons that could make parts of space unusable for up to a year? At first glance, it may be difficult to decipher Russian motivations. In 1939, British prime minister Winston Churchill famously observed that Russian decisionmaking was […]
View Salmon Swimming Upstream: Charting a Course in Cislunar Space By Clayton Swope, Louis GleasonPublishedOctober 21, 2024 There is a lot of promise—and hype—around the future of humankind in cislunar space, roughly the area between geosynchronous Earth orbit and the Moon. But there are also hard realities. Operating in cislunar space presents new technical and policy challenges that the United States and its allies will want to consider. Over the last several years, […]
Why Should the United States Prioritize Mars? By Clayton SwopePublishedMarch 14, 2025 During his inaugural address on January 20, 2024, President Donald Trump indicated he will prioritize U.S. space endeavors focused on Mars. While NASA has a long history of Martian exploration, including operating ongoing missions to the Red Planet, the president’s remarks suggest Mars may play a more central role in NASA’s agenda during the coming years. Unless accompanied by […]
Bringing the Private Sector to Space By Clayton SwopePublishedMarch 14, 2025 Executive Summary A steady cadence of speeches, strategies, reports, and recommendations from senior defense officials and experts extol the virtues of commercial space and urge increased use of commercial space services and products for national security. Yet the rhetoric does not match reality, in spite of meaningful progress made at the Pentagon, as commercial space is not being integrated and used at the scale needed […]
