Sovereignty vs safety: collaboration crisis in space

The average person uses 40 satellites a day. Credit: NicoElNino / Shutterstock

More than one million pieces of man-made debris and around 30,163 registered space objects are currently orbiting the Earth. Reflecting the growing congestion in orbit, the UK National Space Operations Centre and the UK Space Agency jointly reported a record 12-month rolling average of 2,376 potential collision scenarios to UK-licensed satellites.

The mixture of satellite uses spans commercial and military purposes. In the UK alone, the average person is likely to use around 40 satellites throughout their day from checking the weather to navigating congestion on the roads.

The need for effective global collaboration on space domain/situational awareness (SDA/SSA) data has never been more apparent to protect nations from adversaries, maintain critical national infrastructure, and protect the public interest from space rubbish and debris.

For 62 years the US and UK have worked together on satellite tracking and general space surveillance, which was when RAF Fylingdales, in Yorkshire, first came into operation. The surviving three-faced 360-degree radar, in the US-led space surveillance network, provides 24/7 missile warning and surveillance services to the respective governments monitoring objects as small as 12cm and as far away as 3,000 miles into space.

UK Space Command told Global Defence Technology that the UK will continue to work alongside all international allies and partners in the delivery of its SDA plans. In relation to future planning, the UK is looking to expand dual-use SDA sensors and data networks to exploit its space surveillance and tracking data capabilities. This is in addition to understanding more on space weather.

The UK Space Command continued, stating the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has procured commercial data from geostationary orbit to support the protection and defence of SKYNET - the MoD’s satellite communication capability. In March 2025, it was announced that the first of the SKYNET 6 assets, 6A, had completed the initial phase of testing at the National Satellite Test Facility in Oxfordshire.

The satellite will utilise digital processing and radio frequency spectrum utilisation and is expected to be launched in 2026.

UK tech company Spaceflux was tasked in Q4 2023 to build a new ground-based space camera-telescope system known as Project ‘Nyx Alpha’, which will monitor objects in geostationary orbit approximately 36,000km above the Earth’s equator from Cyprus. Alongside the development of ‘Nyx Beta’ are UK electro-optical sensor projects which will enable data sharing with allies.

In practice, the UK straddles its US and European commitments in data sharing through legacy partnerships and good neighbourly surveillance. London continues to progress its domestic innovations as demonstrated through the recent contract award of £65m ($82.7m) for the Borealis command, control, and data processing system which will support the UK military and the UK Space Agency with the monitoring and protection of satellites.

At Farnborough International Space Show (FISS) 2025, UK Air & Space Commander Air Marshal Allan Marshall OBE RAF said: “We can't afford to have sovereignty everywhere. [We] need to work out where we have interoperability with allies and where we need to access other capabilities. I’m very happy to buy in services, but equally there will be ‘must own’ capability.”

Driven by the EU Space Strategy for Security and Defence (EU SSD), member states with SDA capabilities are encouraged to deliver services that secure the EU's strategic autonomy in space. Simultaneously, the strategy advances the development of dual-use space services which incorporate defence needs as the EU space programme evolves.

There is evidentially partnering between countries being undertaken. However, political discourse from the US is challenging the collaborative dialogue as space becomes labelled as a warfighting domain. This, in turn, alters data management practices and knowledge sharing of SDA which is sometimes managed by commercial actors who are actively supporting military aims.

For example, Slingshot Aerospace, with offices in the US and UK, uses data technology to support advanced SDA, space traffic coordination, and space security for customers such as DARPA, NASA, and DSTL. Seradata, the company’s satellite and launch database, recorded from January to March 2023 and 2025 respectively an increase in spacecraft deployments from 700 to 820.

At the recent FISS, Slingshot Aerospace’s managing director Melissa Quinn commented on a shift taking place across the space sector, noting a shift away from collaboration and more to prioritising sovereign capability, indicative of a decline in trust between parties.

Quinn said: “We're [Slingshot Aerospace] moving towards an interoperable system that everybody can share into and share that data for the betterment of everybody. [However,] I'm now seeing this splintering of ‘no, we need to trust our own’.

“So, if you have multiple systems and multiple sources of data that might be seeing different things in a very complex environment, I think the geopolitical tensions globally now in space are going to be a huge challenge for us. As commercial companies we can hopefully try and help solve but I think it [geopolitical tensions] doesn't help.”

The premise of SDA is clearly shifting from alliances towards a more unilateral stance, with the Trump administration continuing to move away from solely protecting space assets, towards a more weaponised position.

General B. Chance Saltzman, Chief of Space Operations, US Space Force, recently stated: “We must think of space as a warfighting domain, rather than just a collection of support activities… Space control is how the Space Force achieves space superiority.”

There is no universal framework or equivalent to the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) for space domain awareness or management. As more nations, not solely the US and UK, but Japan and Australia, Russia and China, create their own indigenous capabilities, the challenge lies in a complex constellation of orbital traffic not necessarily coordinated between actors, increasing the potential of a catastrophic incident as congestion and objects multiply.

Richard DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US Department of Commerce, on a Space News call in February, noted: “There may be a future time when we coalesce. It may look like the World Meteorological Organization, where you have sharing of information from different systems, or it may look like something different, but today, the best we think you could do would be to have protocols for sharing some basic information.”

With growing space traffic increasing collision risks, this necessitates global collaboration on data sharing. This in turn will require a robust safety framework to protect assets, whether they are commercial or military.

Australia could be one of the main beneficiaries of this dramatic increase in demand, where private companies and local governments alike are eager to expand the country’s nascent rare earths production. In 2021, Australia produced the fourth-most rare earths in the world. It’s total annual production of 19,958 tonnes remains significantly less than the mammoth 152,407 tonnes produced by China, but a dramatic improvement over the 1,995 tonnes produced domestically in 2011.

The dominance of China in the rare earths space has also encouraged other countries, notably the US, to look further afield for rare earth deposits to diversify their supply of the increasingly vital minerals. With the US eager to ringfence rare earth production within its allies as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, including potentially allowing the Department of Defense to invest in Australian rare earths, there could be an unexpected windfall for Australian rare earths producers.