GoKawiilMore organizations than ever before are operating, financing and regulating activities in space. The question is whether all this activity is designed intentionally — with each sector contributing what it does best — or left to fragment through uncoordinated choices.
Historic Artemis II Moon fly-by: Nature’s live coverage as it happened
Problems of incoherence are already evident and will mount. Orbital congestion is growing, with thousands of satellites crowding low Earth orbit and defunct satellites generating debris. More than 40,000 shards of metal circling Earth threaten to collide with spacecraft1, yet there is no internationally agreed protocol requiring space junk to be tracked or remediated.
Scientific, commercial and security activities in space are often planned in isolation, even when they operate in similar orbits2 and use the same communications frequencies3. A patchwork of approaches for space-traffic management and data sharing heightens risks of confusion and collisions.
Plans for future Moon bases and infrastructures are also being prepared in parallel, without shared norms4. And the race to control lunar resources raises questions about rights to extraction, liability and benefit-sharing that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty left unresolved.
Key research facilities on Earth and in orbit also need protection from reflected light and radio interference from satellites. Flagship astrophysics projects — such as the James Webb Space Telescope, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, the Extremely Large Telescope, also in Chile, and the Square Kilometre Array in South Africa and Australia — will provide crucial data for next-generation navigation and forecasting systems.
The core tension is this: governments prioritize security and sovereignty, whereas companies optimize speed and commercial advantage, and scientists require stability and open data. These priorities are rarely reconciled before systems are built and deployed.
What is needed is space diplomacy. Here, we highlight three mechanisms that can enable many groups to operate in space without undermining one another. First, building coordination into the licensing and design phase of space systems; second, creating venues where governments, industry and scientists develop operational norms together; and third, establishing shared technical interfaces for interoperability and safety that all actors can adopt — not as a treaty obligation, but as the shared plumbing that makes the system work.
Such an approach can extend beyond space. Any science- or technology-driven domain in which many groups share fragile infrastructure — such as biosecurity, the high seas and artificial intelligence — faces the same coordination challenge.
China’s Chang’e-6 mission returned the first samples from the far side of the Moon.Credit: CNSA/CLEP
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