Highlights

Abstract

The chapter introduces the fact that a number of factors are attributed in recent years regarding the future security of outer space with substantive activity in United Nations forums. Awareness has been raised for increasing number of space around the world of the importance of the space realm to human security and development. Vital services such as telecommunications and internet connections to enable banking transactions to telemedicine and tele-education to support of military operations are being provided by the Satellites for nation states. The rising use of space has, in turn, resulted in an augment in concerns about potential satellite interference, orbital crowding and, most importantly, the threat of an ever-more polluted space environment to the continued functioning of satellites and spacecraft. The chapter also reveals that the improved access to more sophisticated space technologies has also resulted in increasing application of space assets for military purposes, raising tensions among major space-faring nations. It also conveys that generally very few of these efforts have resulted in substantial steps forwarded in protecting future space security with the exception of the GA adoption of the Conference on Disarmament (CD) or the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) voluntary guidelines on space debris mitigation and the trajectory of activity is in the right direction.