Human missions beyond low Earth orbit face cosmic radiation as the most critical biomedical and operational hazard. High-energy protons, heavy ions, and secondary radiation penetrate shielding, damaging DNA, generating oxidative stress, and driving long-term risks such as cancer, neurocognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, and ocular degeneration. These effects are amplified by microgravity and psychological stressors, creating a multi-factorial exposure environment rather than a simple dose–response relationship. While passive and active shielding, trajectory optimization, and predictive monitoring reduce exposure, they remain inadequate against unpredictable solar events and persistent galactic cosmic rays. Although substantial research exists in radiation biology, space engineering, and heliophysics, these domains remain largely siloed, limiting translation into operational mission frameworks for long-duration exploration. This perspective commentary proposes an integrated systems framework that reframes cosmic radiation risk as a coupled biomedical, engineering, and governance challenge. It synthesizes current knowledge on biological risks associated with galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles, evaluates mitigation strategies including shielding, operational planning, and biomedical countermeasures, and situates these within structured space health care systems and occupational risk governance. Central to this perspective is the need for integrated, evidence-based frameworks that link astronaut health surveillance, exposure modeling, spacecraft design, and mission planning into a continuous operational feedback system. Rather than treating radiation as an isolated environmental hazard, this approach positions it as a managed systems-level parameter of deep-space mission design. By linking biological, engineering, and policy perspectives, this commentary highlights the need for interdisciplinary integration to transform radiation from an existential barrier into a manageable risk. This systems-based perspective supports safe and sustainable deep-space exploration and provides a transferable model for other high-risk, high-reliability environments.
The increasing volume and diversity of space activities, from satellite constellations and space tourism to lunar exploration and beyond, demand a coordinated approach to commercial spaceport development on Earth. The primary purpose of this article is to examine the potential creation of an Integrated Network for Commercial Spaceports (INCS), a global framework designed to unify the operations, standards, and resources of commercial spaceports worldwide, thereby meeting the growing demands of the space sector while fostering sustainability in spaceport development and utilization. The INCS would provide a voluntary, nonregulatory, consensus-driven collaborative platform where commercial spaceports share interoperable standards, logistics protocols, and digital tools to meet the growing demands of the space industry. This framework operates under centralized oversight with decentralized implementation, fostering seamless operations and equitable access to space without supplanting national sovereignty or existing international bodies. This article examines the potential challenges of establishing the INCS, including regulatory alignment, technological, and economic hurdles, and emphasizes the need for international collaboration and alignment with existing space governance frameworks. While the INCS framework is currently conceptual, this article outlines a phased validation pathway, acknowledges implementation limitations, and proposes measurable key performance indicators to guide future empirical testing and stakeholder adoption. The article also addresses cybersecurity architecture and data sovereignty requirements for the INCS digital infrastructure, identifying orbital debris mitigation as an operational sustainability dimension within the network’s scope.
Following the early achievements in the U.S. space program, expectations (and demands) for future success became high, and the “achieve big things” mantra was largely replaced with “build reliable systems.” The approach to build reliable systems has been based on a combination of using a standardized set of building blocks and system reliability prediction methods. The demand to build reliable systems is certainly noble, but the aforementioned methods would form a trap that freezes technology to largely 1960s capability with support from a misused methodology that would further penalize any departure from the deemed-reliable building blocks. This article will frame the technical problem and resulting perils of imposing a probability of success requirement on a newly developed space system and provide a basis to discontinue the practice.
This study assesses stakeholder alignment in the emerging Brazilian commercial launch ecosystem through a multidimensional readiness framework that integrates technological, organizational, legal, and operational dimensions with stakeholder management. The analysis focuses on three core actors: a private launch vehicle developer, a state-owned enterprise responsible for commercial coordination, and the Alc & acirc;ntara Launch Center as the operational provider. Results indicate heterogeneous maturity levels, with the launch provider at intermediate technological and funding readiness (Technology Readiness Level 6, Funding Readiness Level 6), the state-owned enterprise at early organizational and legal maturity (Organizational Readiness Level 3, Legal Readiness Level 4), and the launch center at moderate operational readiness (Operational Readiness Level 6). The study identifies inter-stakeholder misalignment as the primary barrier to system-level readiness and proposes a coordinated roadmap toward 2028, supported by governance mechanisms, contractual integration, and shared performance metrics. Benchmarking against international spaceports highlights Alc & acirc;ntara's strategic advantages, including its near-equatorial location, while also recognizing constraints related to logistics and infrastructure maturity. The findings emphasize the role of the Brazilian Space Agency and the Brazilian Air Force as institutional orchestrators and highlight that stakeholder alignment is a necessary enabling condition, though not sufficient on its own, for the sustainable commercialization of launch services in Brazil in the New Space economy.
The emergence of the New Space ecosystem has reshaped the organization of space activities, fostering increased private participation, competition, and commercial dynamism. Building on the literature on industrial policy and space governance, the article contends that the New Space ecosystem requires a reorientation of space policy toward a space industrial policy (SIP) that explicitly prioritizes commercial viability, economic development, and technological capability-building. The article defines the concept of SIP and distinguishes it from traditional space policy, emphasizing its focus on competitiveness, risk-sharing, and public-private coordination. The analytical framework is then applied to the Brazilian case, highlighting institutional challenges and policy gaps that constrain the country's integration into the New Space economy. The article concludes by discussing the implications of adopting an SIP for emerging spacefaring nations.
Since the late 1950s, there have been concerns about the shortage of science and engineering talent at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and in the American private civil space sector. In the early 2000s, the emergence of major NewSpace companies added further pressure to the constrained talent supply and the compensation competitiveness of NASA and Legacy Space enterprises. Since NASA last commissioned a publicly available study on compensation differences for space-related talent in 1969, this study aims to reignite research discussions on the importance of compensation in space talent acquisition and guide science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professionals in their career decisions. In this study, the salaries of over 600 U.S.-based aerospace engineers at eight major space organizations are analyzed between 2019 and 2024. The study finds that aerospace engineers experienced lower salary growth and relatively more volatile employment rates during the COVID-19 era; however, their employment opportunities increased relatively more compared to other professions when high inflation subsided. From a regional U.S. job market perspective, the aerospace engineering profession is concentrated in the Top 10 high-income and high-employment states. The study concludes with NASA/Government providing lower but predictable, stable, and structured salary growth. Legacy Space compensation also focuses on stability, but with more long-term salary growth than government employees. NewSpace salaries exhibit high initial career growth, followed by significant volatility, drops, and long-term stagnation. Given that the majority of NASA’s budget is allocated to private enterprises, Legacy Space may be a better career option, particularly given NewSpace’s long-term compensation volatility.
The New Space is imposing a global reorganization in the space sector, leaving national programs to coordinate civil, commercial, and military interests across the space power triad under governance arrangements. This article asks how the Brazilian space ecosystem is articulated across the three domains and which governance mechanisms could close structural gaps that might erode its long-term economic sustainability. The evidence base combines 16 semi-structured interviews with government, industry, and academic experts, documentary analysis, and a modified Space Technology Ladder. Three findings hold together. Public funding remains the ecosystem’s primary energy source, while horizontal integration across the three domains stays uneven. The civil program, historically undercapitalized, is the most tractable instrument available for inducing commercial activity, and currently the most underused. The Brazilian program has not settled on a primary international partner for space development, and this distributed pattern limits the capability transfer available from any single bilateral relationship. We frame these findings as structural decoupling at four institutional levels and argue that addressing it requires repositioning civil procurement as a market-shaping instrument rather than a residual budget line.
Sustained human activity beyond Low-Earth Orbit is shifting from isolated, mission-specific operations toward persistent, multiactor infrastructure, yet coordination, interoperability, and resource governance remain fragmented. This article develops a systems-level synthesis and a governance proposal for a Fully Functional Space Ecosystem (FFSE) spanning four interdependent domains (governance, in-space infrastructure, resource utilization, and biological life support) linked across the Earth–Moon–Mars corridor and the asteroid belt by an Interplanetary Logistics Grid. Its central contribution is institutional: a multilateral Space Ecosystem Organization, justified through a mandate-gap analysis of existing instruments (the Outer Space Treaty, COPUOS/UNOOSA, the ITU, and the Artemis Accords) that identifies functions no current body performs for sustained off-world operations. Methodologically, the study applies a structured evidence synthesis, a domain-by-domain gap analysis, a technology-readiness level assessment, and an order-of-magnitude feasibility check, with all sources classified by evidentiary tier and every claim labeled as evidence-based (near-term) or projective (long-horizon). On this basis, the binding technical gaps ( e.g. , in-situ resource utilization-to-propulsion integration, multiagent autonomy under communication latency, and partial-gravity life-support validation) are presented in a phased, criteria-gated roadmap from robotic prototyping to operational hubs. FFSE is based on an evidence-anchored architecture-and-governance framework whose near-term elements are grounded in flight and analog data and whose long-horizon elements are explicitly flagged as requiring further quantitative and empirical validation.
Sustainable human presence on the Moon and Mars requires surface infrastructure capable of supporting landing, refueling, cargo handling, and ISRU. This paper presents a systems architecture for extraterrestrial spaceports, informed by terrestrial logistics analogs ( e.g., port operations, ICAO standards) and space mission data (Artemis, Perseverance, VIPER). Key components include regolith-mitigating landing pads, autonomous construction using robotic excavators ( e.g., RASSOR), ISRU-to-propulsion chains ( e.g., Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, Sabatier reactors), and modular habitats. The analysis identifies key gaps: limited validation of ISRU-derived materials under lunar/Martian stressors, absence of standardized interface protocols for cross-provider interoperability, and insufficient power solutions for 14-day lunar nights or Martian dust storms. A phased implementation strategy is proposed, from robotic site surveys (2030s) to crew-tended hubs (2040s), prioritizing risk reduction through Earth-based analog testing and international standardization. The framework supports the emergence of an Interplanetary Logistics Grid but does not prescribe governance models. Instead, it offers a technically grounded foundation for infrastructure development aligned with COSPAR planetary protection and sustainability principles.
Our study explores the economic implications and returns on investment (ROIs) of government cofunded CubeSat initiatives, focusing on a Hungarian case within the New Space Economy. It highlights CubeSat as cost-effective platforms for scientific exploration and technology demonstrations, revealing a projected ROI ratio of 1:2.58 for the privately funded portion of a Hungarian nanosatellite mission launched in August 2024, compared with the United Kingdom’s general 1:9.8 ratio from all European Space Agency investments. Cubesat enhance scientific productivity, with the Firebird II mission yielding 2.2 publications per million dollars, outperforming larger missions. They also contribute to workforce development by providing hands-on experience for students and researchers. However, the success rate for first-time CubeSat developers is a concern due to project management challenges, early stage on the learning curve, and the absence of economies of scale. To improve mission success and ROI, structured project management practices are essential. This article concludes that government-funded CubeSat projects can yield significant economic and scientific returns, emphasizing the need to address operational challenges and foster innovation and education in the space sector.
The commercial space market has grown significantly since the beginning of the 21st century. Access to space has historically been provided through government-owned and operated launch facilities ( e.g., those in the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia). Currently, no commercially owned spaceport exists near or at the Equator to compete with the growing global space sector demand. Therefore, proposed spaceports around the world aiming to serve the growing global commercial space sector indicate a future market that may be highly competitive. To help align the growing commercial space market with Kenya’s interest in developing a functioning spaceport, the Omega Spaceport is proposed as a next-generation equatorial commercial spaceport concept, designed from inception as a fully commercial, multi-tenant launch and space services facility. Kenya’s equatorial position offers a distinct advantage for orbital launches, enabling rockets to achieve greater efficiency and cost savings due to the Earth’s rotational velocity at the Equator. The Omega Spaceport aims to capitalize on this advantage by providing state-of-the-art facilities for commercial satellite launches, space tourism, research missions, scientific payload delivery, and regional launch access for emerging space nations. The paper adopts a conceptual techno-economic and policy framework grounded in existing spaceport industry literature and spaceport readiness concepts to outline a phased development pathway for Omega Spaceport. By situating Kenya’s equatorial site within a competitive global landscape of existing and emerging launch facilities, the paper highlights a realistic multi-decade roadmap for achieving increasing levels of capability and readiness. The Omega Spaceport represents an opportunity for Kenya and Africa to contribute to the global space economy through regional collaboration, sustainable development practices, and technology transfer.
This study empirically examines the factors shaping countries' transitions toward indigenous satellite production capability over the 1996-2024 period using a panel dataset of 85 countries. While the institutional infrastructure of the space sector is often treated in the literature as a fixed background condition, empirical evidence on how and under what circumstances countries achieve domestic satellite production remains limited. To address this gap, the analysis models the timing of a country's first transition to indigenous satellite production, defined as full or partial domestic involvement in satellite development, within a survival analysis framework that accounts for time dependence and censored observations. Parametric and semi-parametric specifications are estimated, with model selection criteria indicating that the Gompertz distribution provides the best fit to the data. The results reveal strong evidence of institutional path dependence, as the presence of a national space agency significantly increases the likelihood of achieving indigenous satellite production capability. Macroeconomic stability, captured by the current account balance, and demographic scale further accelerate this transition, while high-technology exports exhibit a limited positive association. By contrast, alternative and nuclear energy use does not display a statistically significant effect. To assess robustness, the baseline results are complemented with a Cox proportional hazards model and a discrete-time hazard model estimated under a logistic specification, both of which yield qualitatively consistent findings. In addition, Shapley Additive Explanations are employed for interpretability to visualize variable contributions to predicted event probabilities, confirming that accumulated experience over time and institutional capacity dominate the transition to indigenous satellite production, while macroeconomic and technological factors play secondary roles. Overall, the findings suggest that indigenous satellite production emerges primarily through sector-specific institutional accumulation and long-term economic capacity rather than generalized cross-sectoral technological spillovers.
Primary care globally is experiencing a critical inflection point, challenged by rising patient complexity, workforce shortages, and escalating physician burnout. At the same time, renewed global momentum in space exploration, led by NASA's Artemis program, increasing international participation in space activities, and rapid expansion of the private spaceflight industry, is driving unprecedented awareness and advances in space medicine and technology. The operational demands of sustaining human health during deep space missions mirror challenges faced in Earth-based primary care, particularly in remote, resource-limited, and underserved settings. These shared constraints create a unique opportunity for cross-sector translation of innovation. This article argues that space medicine offers a structured innovation platform for enhancing primary care delivery on Earth. We explore key areas of convergence, including telemedicine, AI-augmented diagnostics, and wearable health technologies, which are being developed for and refined in extreme space environments. We further examine the role of physician-astronauts, whose dual-domain expertise provides transferable insights into systems design, clinical decision-making, and care delivery under constrained conditions. We propose that the space sector functions not only as a frontier of exploration but also as a real-time testbed for scalable health system innovation. By leveraging these advances, primary care can be reimagined to improve resilience, accessibility, and sustainability in both terrestrial and extreme environments.
Cost-feasibility assessment remains a persistent challenge in the New Space economy, where early-stage missions must be evaluated under profound technological, operational, and financial uncertainty and where reliable historical cost data are often unavailable. Conventional parametric and regression-based cost models offer limited support in these settings, as critical architectural decisions are taken before technologies, interfaces, and operational concepts have stabilized. This study proposes a hybrid, expert-based framework for structuring early-stage cost-feasibility reasoning in frontier space missions by integrating systematic literature review, structured expert elicitation, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling. The framework is demonstrated through a case study of lunar oxygen production via regolith sublimation. Implemented across three phases, the approach identifies and refines mission-relevant cost drivers through Delphi-based expert judgment and synthesizes these assessments into a coherent quantitative structure. The resulting model explains approximately 57% of the variance in expert cost assessments, indicating stable and interpretable patterns in expert judgment under conditions of high uncertainty. Within this structure, technological readiness and operational efficiency emerge as the most influential dimensions shaping perceptions of overall project magnitude. Rather than aiming to predict realized mission costs, the framework is designed to support relative comparison, early-stage architectural decision-making, and the disciplined organization of uncertainty. Anchored to an equipment-cost proxy and expert-derived driver weights, the framework produces an illustrative, order-of-magnitude project-scale estimate of approximately USD 30.7 billion for the reference mission configuration, consistent with expectations for large-scale space-resource initiatives. The principal contribution of the study lies in providing a transparent process for translating dispersed expert knowledge into structured cost-feasibility reasoning, with implications for early mission planning, derisking strategies, and stakeholder alignment in high-uncertainty space ventures.
The rapid commercialization of outer space, driven by private ventures in satellite constellations, lunar and asteroid resource extraction, and orbital tourism, has posed serious challenges to the foundational framework of international space law since its establishment in the 1960s and 1970s. The commercialization of outer space has reduced operating costs and accelerated technological advancements, but it has also raised ethical and legal concerns. Indeed, states remain the fundamental subjects of international space law, maintaining primary responsibility for the space activities carried out within their jurisdiction, including the functions performed by private players, in accordance with the international space regime, which sharply focuses on the concepts of authorization, supervision, and liability. In a broader perspective of accountability, property rights, environmental protection, and equitable access to celestial resources, the mushrooming growth of commercial space operators has demonstrated inherent weaknesses in the existing legal regime of international outer space law. This article critically examines the commercialization of outer space and the role of the international legal regime governing it. This article argues that states must clarify their responsibilities under international space law, particularly with respect to liability for private actors. It proposes a new regulatory framework to address these gaps for sustainable commercialization.
This article presents an interdisciplinary assessment of the need to transform our single-planet civilization into a multi-planetary species through the lens of space resource extraction. In light of the annually increasing volumes of resource mining driven by ever-growing demand, the issue of replenishing the mineral and raw materials base required to sustain and further advance technological progress remains highly relevant. Accordingly, this article evaluates the prospects for the development of space resource mining, emphasizing its interconnection with the energy development of civilization as outlined by N.S. Kardashev, and provides a brief overview of the sources of these resources along with existing strategies for their utilization.
This pathfinder business modeling paper presents a first-order economic analysis of a proposed Earth orbital swath mapping laser altimeter (EDGE: Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer), a mission concept targeted for launch in the early 2030s under the openly competed NASA's Earth System Explorers program. EDGE represents a potentially significant leap in global Earth elevation mapping, aiming to achieve approximately 0.10-m vertical accuracy, which is more than a 10-fold improvement over existing global benchmarks of 5-10 m. We evaluate the economic return via a stacked AI-based modeling approach on the estimated $400-$450 million upfront satellite mission investment through a multisector impact assessment extending to similar to 2040. Our business-oriented analysis builds upon established figures-of-merit frameworks from comparable Earth observation (EO) programs, particularly the United States Geological Survey (USGS) 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), which demonstrates a 5:1 return ratio from high-precision elevation data at regional scales. Our stacked AI/machine learning-modeling analysis estimates that EDGE's nearly global coverage of Earth's solid surfaces (including ice-covered regions, forests, bare land, agricultural areas, and coastal zones) will generate economic benefits of approximately $3-$5 billion annually by similar to 2035, escalating to $8-$10 billion annually by 2040 under specific input parameters as commercial applications mature. Assuming launch in 2031, a 2-year mission life, and 1 year for data processing and release, initial economic benefits would begin accruing by similar to 2034-2035. This would translate to a projected net present value (NPV) under a moderate adoption case of similar to$33B (at 3% discount) within 5 years of final EDGE mission data release, and a potential benefit-cost return on investment >50:1 (present value) by similar to 2040 as the data ecosystem expands in response. Our analysis explores how EDGE's unprecedented vertical elevation accuracy could realistically catalyze value across multiple sectors, including disaster management, infrastructure development, natural resource management, agriculture, and environmental change adaptation planning. Furthermore, we evaluate how this mission could potentially stimulate a public-private marketplace for orbital topographic data services analogous to the evolution seen in commercial satellite (2D) land imaging, with potential applications extending to lunar and Martian 3D mapping in direct support of NASA's Moon-to-Mars human exploration program's highest-priority data and technical gaps circa 2026.
