Outer Space and Crisis Risk

Space activities pose a particular risk of sparking or exacerbating terrestrial crises in ways that may be difficult to predict or manage. This is due both to the physical nature of operating in space and to space’s particular history. However, many initiatives to bolster space security do so within the framework of preventing an arms race or of preserving the space environment and so they miss some of the solutions. This chapter explores looking at space security through the lens of mitigating the risks that space activities may pose to crisis stability to identify which space activities and strategies are particularly dangerous and to prioritize unilateral and collective approaches to mitigating these problems.