You’re Reading This Story Thanks To Decades Of Space Exploration—but That’s Exactly Why Policies Need To Change

There’s a very common question asked of people working in space exploration: Why explore space when we have so many problems on Earth?

From Wi-Fi, to satellite images of real estate, to matters of national security, much of our daily lives has been made possible by policy changes in the 1990s that permitted the deployment of low-Earth-orbit satellites. But the tangible benefits to space exploration may not always be obvious, according to Jack Kilray, director of government relations for The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing space science and exploration.

“What we discover in space invariably helps life on Earth,” Kilray said at last month’s World Changing Ideas Summit, cohosted by Fast Company and Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C. “These investments in fundamental research—although maybe you don’t see those direct comparisons to your life immediately—have these knock-on effects for decades after you make that initial discovery and revolutionize the economy, national security, and just our fundamental understanding of the cosmos.”

And space has evolved to become a critical infrastructure, said Rich Cooper, vice president of strategic communications for the Space Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for space education and exploration. More than 90 countries now have active space operations, and hundreds of companies are operating business interests in space—which is why policy efforts must focus on balancing the needs of these various interests, he added.

Dealing with space traffic and litter

In space, one of the biggest policy challenges right now is managing all of the traffic. Finding the place for a satellite or other instrument, so it doesn’t impact any other operations, is “literally threading quite the needle,” Cooper said.

The policies about how to deal with space litter have improved—governments and companies are now required to have a plan in place to prevent the creation of more orbital debris, though more work is still required.

“Countries as well as companies are looking to be much, much more responsible, but we still have other players that need to be far more responsible than they’ve been,” Cooper said.

The next era of human exploration

Finally, policies must adapt amid the race that’s underway to send humans to the moon once again, and eventually to Mars. The good news is that this next era of space exploration is likely to unite people around the globe, Kilray said.

“It’s no longer just a flags-and-footprints approach, but a sustainable approach to whether it be lunar exploration with crew or scientific exploration of the outer planets or the building of the next great observatory to image habitable worlds around other star systems—like that’s all within our grasp as a species, which is truly amazing,” Kilray said. “We couldn’t have imagined what was possible today 60 years ago.”