View Next Steps for the U.S.-Japan Space Alliance By Sean Wilson PublishedApril 10, 2025 Japan’s heavy investment in space capabilities, coupled with the importance of space in supporting U.S. power projection in the region, has contributed to space becoming a strategic pillar of the U.S.-Japan alliance in recent years. The importance of the bilateral space partnership was highlighted recently in a joint statement from the February 2025 meeting of President Trump…
View U.S. Leadership in Lunar Spectrum Policy By Shayna Gersten PublishedMarch 17, 2025 Over the next decade, NASA and many commercial and international entities plan to send missions to the Moon. All of these missions will use spectrum to communicate with Earth. However, the international regulatory frameworks overseeing radio spectrum beyond Earth’s orbits (such as “lunar spectrum”) are underdeveloped, creating the potential for interference and disruptions to communications…
View Bringing the Private Sector to Space By Clayton Swope PublishedMarch 14, 2025 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 to maximize…
View Why Should the United States Prioritize Mars? By Clayton Swope PublishedMarch 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…
Why Did South Korea Create a New Space Agency? By Jacob Bradley PublishedNovember 8, 2024 On May 27, 2024, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced the creation of the Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA), which replaced the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) as the lead government organization for Korea’s space program and research activities.[i] KASA was created to reorganize disparate Korean agencies to foster greater efficiency and space innovation. Under…
View Space In Focus By Kari A. Bingen, Audrey M. Schaffer PublishedOctober 31, 2024 We are at a consequential moment in space. Space capabilities underpin our daily lives, our national security, our economy, and our ability to explore deep into the cosmos. Yet challenges to the domain and the international order are acute, and U.S. leadership in space is under strain. Actions and decisions now will determine whether space…
View Salmon Swimming Upstream: Charting a Course in Cislunar Space By Clayton Swope, Louis Gleason PublishedOctober 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,…
View Why Hasn’t Starliner Returned? By Clayton Swope PublishedAugust 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 Songer PublishedJuly 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 Pedal to the Metal: Accelerating Pentagon Integration of Commercial Space By Audrey M. Schaffer PublishedMay 17, 2024 The Department of Defense (DOD) recently released two documents describing a new approach to tapping into private sector space capabilities—the DOD Commercial Space Integration Strategy, issued by the secretary of defense, and the U.S. Space Force Commercial Space Strategy, issued jointly by the chief of space operations and the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space…
