Saadia Pekkanen

Saadia Pekkanen, a University of Washington professor of international studies, believes the city can expand its reach even further by also becoming a hub for space diplomacy. This mission led her to start the annual Space Diplomacy Symposium at the UW in 2023.

Saadia Pekkanen is quoted: "It is fiction to think of neat civilian-military divisions in the space domain," she says. "Because space technologies are inherently dual-use technologies, we see companies also positioning for national security contracts in the new geopolitical contest."

Kinetic and non-kinetic threats to space assets are rising, and the possibility of satellite warfare breaking out in the open is at an all-time high.

If millions of people are going to be living in space, medical ecosystems will need to evolve. Space medicine, and how it is taught and practiced in universities, need to position for that reality.

Building collaboration and predictability in the international space order is important for peaceful uses of outer space. It is also critical for the future of U.S. hard and soft power.

Lunar landings by China, India and Japan have catapulted Asia to the forefront of the space domain and fueled talk of a new space race. Their rise has also generated arguments both for and against multipolarity in the international space order.

The viability of extracting lunar resources is furiously debated. Yet examining those resources is an obvious first step, and “Japan wants to be part of that history,” says Saadia Pekkanen, director of the Space Law, Data and Policy programme at the University of Washington.

Saadia Pekkanen specializes in space law. The University of Washington professor doesn’t believe Starlink should shoulder all the blame. "It is fair to say Starlink gets a lot of attention, partly because of the lion’s share that it actually holds," said Pekkanen. "Starlink is one of many other companies and the problem is not just about one company."

“What we see is the emergence of two competing designs for getting to the moon and staying there,” said Saadia Pekkanen, founding director of the Space Law, Data and Policy Program at the University of Washington.

This commentary assesses the prospects for the U.S.-Japan alliance in, through, and at the nexus of the contemporary space domain. It surveys the threats the two allies face, their collaborative responses to date, and, looking ahead, the interconnected technology frontiers that will require preemptive and sustained diplomacy to reposition their allied interests in the final frontier. Three elements are critical to that mission: capabilities, clarifications, and communications.

“We’re hopeful that there continues to be dialogue at the international level, but a lot of the regulatory action is actually going to come, we think, at the national level,” Pekkanen says.

"We do need to be vigilant as civilian, commercial, and military activities heat up in space," Saadia Pekkanen, director of the Space Law, Data and Policy Program at the University of Washington School of Law, told Newsweek. "As mega constellations of satellites go into space, we have to worry about collision avoidance with not just other assets but also debris. Collisions between spacecraft and the failures of older satellites and spacecraft also contributes to debris."

The global commons—domains beyond the sovereign jurisdiction of any single state but to which all states have access—are essential to the stability and prosperity of the international order.

"The launch of China's national space station, Tiangong, marks space as a new battleground for US–China competition." By Saadia Pekkanen, adjunct professor and director of UW Law's Space Law, Data and Policy program.

Now is the time to consider how we will educate people about persistent satellite imagery. These efforts will matter when building fact-based narratives in world politics. The fate of working democracies depends on it.