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At the outer limits of the international: Orbital infrastructures and the technopolitics of planetary (in)security

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2020

Columba Peoples Open the ORCID record for Columba Peoples [Opens in a new window]  and
Tim Stevens Open the ORCID record for Tim Stevens [Opens in a new window]
Columba Peoples*
Affiliation:
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies (SPAIS), University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Tim Stevens
Affiliation:
Department of War Studies, King's College London, United Kingdom
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

As staples of science fiction, space technologies, much like outer space itself, have often been regarded as being ‘out there’ objects of international security analysis. However, as a growing subset of security scholarship indicates, terrestrial politics and practices are ever more dependent on space technologies and systems. Existing scholarship in ‘astropolitics’ and ‘critical astropolitics’ has tended to concentrate on how such technologies and systems underpin and impact the dynamics of military security, but this article makes the case for wider consideration of ‘orbital infrastructures’ as crucial to conceptions and governance of planetary security in the context of the ‘Anthropocene’. It does so by outlining and analysing in detail Earth Observation (EO) and Near-Earth Object (NEO) detection systems as exemplary cases of technological infrastructures for ‘looking in’ on and ‘looking out’ for forms of planetary insecurity. Drawing on and extending recent theorisations of technopolitics and of Large Technical Systems, we argue that EO and NEO technologies illustrate, in distinct ways, the extent to which orbital infrastructures should be considered not only part of the fabric of contemporary international security but as particularly significant within and even emblematic of the technopolitics of planetary (in)security.

Keywords

Orbital InfrastructuresPlanetary SecurityPlanetary DefenceTechnopoliticsEarth ObservationNear-Earth Objects
Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , October 2020 , pp. 294 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2020

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47 MacDonald, ‘Anti-Astropolitik’, p. 594, emphasis in original.

48 Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial astropolitics’.

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58 Ibid.

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83 Ibid., p. 51.

84 Borowitz, Open Space.

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87 Molly K. Macauley, ‘Earth observations in a National Space Strategy’, Astropolitics, 8:2–3 (2010), pp. 205–19.

88 Crampton, Mapping, p. 3.

89 See also Daggett, ‘World-viewing’; Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial technopolitics’.

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91 Duncan Steel, Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets (Chichester: John Wiley, 1995), pp. 173–83; Ian Sample, ‘Scientists reveal the full power of the Chelyabinsk meteor explosion’, The Guardian (7 November 2013), available at: {https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-meteor-russia} accessed 22 May 2019.

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96 UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, ‘Near-Earth Objects’ (2020), available at: {https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/topics/neos/index.html} accessed 10 February 2020.

97 Sheehan, ‘Defining space security’.

98 Ibid., p. 18.

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116 Center for Near Earth Object Studies, ‘NEO Basics’, available at: {https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/about/neo_groups.html} accessed 22 May 2019. Objects are only defined as NEOs if they come closer than 0.3 AU to Earth, that is, approximately 45 million kilometres.

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123 United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, Near-Earth Objects and Planetary Defence (June 2018), p. 117, available at: {http://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/smpag/st_space_073E.pdf} accessed 22 May 2019.

124 National Research Council, Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth-Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2010).

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129 Meghan Bartels, ‘Even if we can stop a dangerous asteroid, being human may mean we don't succeed’, Space.com (8 May 2019), available at: {https://www.space.com/asteroid-deflection-human-error-planetary-defense.html} accessed 22 May 2019.

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