About the session
There has been significant development in the usage of space systems, due to increased capabilities and their increased numbers. Current trends allow us to anticipate an acceleration of this pace, based on industry analyses and anticipated revolutions in the cost of access to space. Coupled with new technologies and new use cases, space services will increasingly serve an important role in the critical infrastructure system-of-systems. The article argues that their roles in command, control and coordination, in communication and data gathering, make space systems into a new category of critical infrastructures, whose disruption or destruction would cause significant material damage and even loss of life, along with consumer, investor and citizen confidence. This opens up new opportunities for the issues of space system protection, as the critical infrastructure protection framework of thought offers tools and concepts which highlight issues of interdependencies, complexity and governance.
Critical space infrastructures will also differ significantly in their characteristics from most terrestrial infrastructures. The geographic element of interdependence is downplayed, but coordination for resilience governance becomes more difficult in the global commons of the space environment, even if it is largely about the space surrounding Earth.
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