For example, from 2008 to 2017 government-led funding grew by 44% and the private sector accounted for a lower share of space launches. That doesn’t mean New Space companies have entirely displaced governments from space public investments in space are still higher than the private ones. Space, in short, is no longer only about governments. By launching their own private equipment, they have changed the way global security in, from, and to space has been long understood. And as independent actors, New Space firms have a much more important presence in outer space. For the first time, strategic competition over space is as much based on the private as the public sector. First, as governments increasingly depend on private capabilities to act in space, space companies have obtained an unprecedented level of influence over the development of certain details and capabilities in national space operations.
Yet despite this precedent, highly specialized companies are increasingly shaping the geopolitics of space. More recently, space has emerged as a battlefield in global security. From the control of GPS to support military decision-making to satellite-based communications or precise imagery to assist humanitarian organizations and refugee flows in high-risk countries, governments have a clear and present interest in what happens in outer space. Cold War rivalry spurred the Space Race, and space has stayed in the purview of national competition ever since. She has worked as an expert consultant for the European Commission and Spain's Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center and has supported the Inter-American Development Bank. She is a former Fulbright Fellow in Washington, D.C. Raquel Jorge is policy analyst on technology and strategy at Elcano Royal Institute, with offices in Brussels and Madrid.
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