The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies is pleased to announce the release of its newest policy paper today, Major Policy Issues in Evolving Global Space Operations, by James A. Vedda, Ph.D, of The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy, and Peter L. Hays, Ph.D., of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute. The paper, a collaboration between the Mitchell Institute and The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy, is an authoritative examination of the state of US and international space policy, with Vedda and Hays closely analyzing many dynamic aspects of civil and national security space operations they believe will demand the attention of decision-makers in the near future, such as space traffic management, the expanded use of small satellites or “smallsats,” satellite and orbital vehicle proximity operations, debris concerns, counterspace threats, and norms of behavior.
The report, Vedda and Hays note in the introduction, is designed to inform decision-makers and other interested parties on how the US can develop national space policy to address an evolving space environment. The US and other powers are participants today in a “fundamental reordering” of many tenets and assumptions that have stood as long-standing attributes of US national space policy and international agreements, they note, and while the precise character and magnitude of these changes remain to be seen, “it is clear that the world is experiencing a transition in space development that has many moving parts.”