Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T16:15:30.116Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See, for example, McCarthy, Daniel R., ‘Introduction: Technology in world politics’, in McCarthy, Daniel R. (ed.), Technology and World Politics: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 1–21Google Scholar; Mayer, Maximilian and Acuto, Michele, ‘The global governance of large technical systems’, Millennium, 43:2 (2015), pp. 660–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salter, Mark (ed.), Making Things International 1: Circuits and Motion (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Salter, Mark (ed.), Making Things International 2: Catalysts and Reactions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

2 The most notable of which is Daniel H. Deudney, in his work beginning from the early 1980s – see, in particular, Space: The High Frontier in Perspective, Worldwatch Paper 50 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1982), and Whole Earth Security: A Geopolitics of Peace, Worldwatch Paper 55 (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1983).

3 As an established field of research, via journals like Space Policy and Astropolitics, as well as texts including Sheehan, Michael, The International Politics of Space (London: Routledge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moltz, James Clay, The Politics of Space Security: Strategic Restraint and the Pursuit of National Interests (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008)Google Scholar; and Al-Rodhan, Nayef, Meta-Geopolitics of Outer Space: An Analysis of Space Power, Security and Governance (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Gabrielle Hecht and Paul N. Edwards, ‘The technopolitics of the Cold War: Toward a transregional perspective’, in Michael Adas (ed.), Essays on Twentieth Century History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010), p. 274.

5 See, for example, William E. Connolly, Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017); Catherine Keller, Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018); Bruno Latour, Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).

6 Amy J. Elias and Christian Moraru (eds), The Planetary Turn: Relationality and Geoaesthetics in the Twenty-First Century (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015).

7 Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Audra Mitchell, Simon Dalby, and Daniel J. Levine, ‘Planet politics: a manifesto from the end of IR’, Millennium, 44:3 (2016), p. 510.

8 Ibid., p. 501. See also Dahlia Simangan, ‘Where is the Anthropocene? IR in a new geological epoch’, International Affairs, 96:1 (2020), pp. 211–24.

9 See, for example, Simon Dalby, ‘Rethinking geopolitics: Climate security in the Anthropocene’, Global Policy, 5:1 (2014), pp. 1–9; Cameron Harrington, ‘The ends of the world: International Relations and the Anthropocene’, Millennium, 44:3 (2016), pp. 478–98; Jairus Victor Grove, ‘The geopolitics of extinction’, in McCarthy (ed.), Technology and World Politics, pp. 182–203.

10 Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighbourhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), ch. 3.

11 United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report: New Dimensions of Human Security (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

12 Barry Buzan and Lene Hansen, The Evolution of International Security Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 187–225.

13 John H. Herz, International Politics in the Atomic Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Richard A. Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival (New York: Vintage Books, 1972); Deudney, Whole Earth Security.

14 Herz, International Politics, p. 317.

15 Campbell Craig, ‘Classical realism for the twenty-first century’, in Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest (eds), The Politics of Globality since 1945: Assembling the Planet (London: Routledge, 2016), p. 84.

16 Herz, International Politics, p. 223. See also Tim Stevens, ‘Exeunt omnes? Survival, pessimism and time in the work of John H. Herz’, Millennium, 46:3 (2018), pp. 283–302.

17 Falk, This Endangered Planet, p. 97.

18 Deudney, Whole Earth Security, p. 41.

19 See Daniel Deudney, ‘Turbo change: Accelerating technological disruption, planetary geopolitics, and architectonic metaphors’, International Studies Review, 20:2 (2018), pp. 223–31.

20 Clive Hamilton, Defiant Earth: The Fate of Humans in the Anthropocene (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017).

21 Andrew R. Hom, ‘Timing is everything: Toward a better understanding of time and international politics’, International Studies Quarterly, 62:1 (2018), pp. 69–79.

22 Delf Rothe, ‘Governing the end times? Planet politics and the secular eschatology of the Anthropocene’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 48:2 (2020), pp. 143–64.

23 Jason W. Moore (ed.), Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland: PM Press, 2016).

24 Grove, ‘The geopolitics of extinction’.

25 Deudney, ‘Turbo change’.

26 Deudney, Whole Earth Security; Benjamin Lazier, ‘Earthrise; or, the globalization of the world picture’, The American Historical Review, 116:3 (2011), pp. 602–30; Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest (eds), Nuclear Realism: Global Political Thought during the Thermonuclear Revolution (London: Routledge, 2016); Rens van Munster and Casper Sylvest, ‘Introduction’, in van Munster and Sylvest (eds), The Politics of Globality, pp. 1–20.

27 Alice Gorman, ‘The Anthropocene in the solar system’, Journal of Contemporary Archaeology, 1:1 (2014), p. 87.

28 McCarthy, ‘Introduction’.

29 Cara Daggett, ‘World-viewing as world-making: Feminist technoscience, International Relations, and the aesthetics of the Anthropocene’, in J. P. Singh, Madeline Carr, and Renée Marlin-Bennett (eds), Science, Technology and Art in International Relations (New York: Routledge, 2019), p. 40.

30 Mayer and Acuto, ‘The global governance of large technical systems’, p. 678.

31 Ibid., p. 667, emphasis in original.

32 Ibid., p. 662. See Bruno Latour, ‘Where are the missing masses? The sociology of a few mundane artifacts’, in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (eds), Shaping Technology/Building Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 225–58.

33 See, for example, Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition (London: Routledge, 2001).

34 Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (London: Verso, 2014).

35 Raymond Duvall and Jonathan Havercroft, ‘Taking sovereignty out of this world: Space weapons and the empire of the future’, Review of International Studies, 34:4 (2008), pp. 755–75; Jonathan Havercroft and Raymond Duvall, ‘Critical astropolitics: the geopolitics of space control and the transformation of state sovereignty’, in Natalie Bormann and Michael Sheehan (eds), Securing Outer Space (London: Routledge, 2009), pp. 42–58; Fraser MacDonald, ‘Anti-Astropolitik – outer space and the orbit of geography’, Progress in Human Geography, 31:5 (2007), pp. 592–615.

36 Paul N. Edwards and Gabrielle Hecht, ‘History and the technopolitics of identity: the case of apartheid South Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 36:3 (2010), p. 619. See also Gabrielle Hecht (ed.), Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Columba Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial technopolitics: the politics of technology in space’, in McCarthy (ed.), Technology and World Politics, pp. 182–203; Columba Peoples, ‘Envisioning “global security’”? The Earth viewed from outer space as a motif in security discourses’, in van Munster and Sylvest (eds), The Politics of Globality, pp. 164–87; Daggett, ‘World-viewing as world-making’.

37 John Agnew, ‘The territorial trap: the geographical assumptions of International Relations theory’, Review of International Political Economy, 1:1 (1994), pp. 53–80.

38 Jill Stuart, ‘Unbundling sovereignty, territory and the state in outer space: Two approaches’, in Bormann and Sheehan (eds), Securing Outer Space, pp. 8–23. See also Natalie Bormann, ‘The lost dimension? A spatial reading of US weaponization of space’, in Bormann and Sheehan (eds), Securing Outer Space, pp. 76–90.

39 John Agnew, ‘Still trapped in territory?’, Geopolitics, 15:4 (2010), pp. 779–84.

40 Respectively, Peter Adey, Mark Whitehead, and Alison J. Williams (eds), From Above: War, Violence and Verticality (London: Hurst & Company, 2013); Stephen Graham, Vertical: The City from Satellites to Bunkers (London: Verso, 2016).

41 Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, and Colin N. Waters et al., ‘Scale and diversity of the physical technosphere: A geological perspective’, The Anthropocene Review, 4:1 (2017), pp. 9–22.

42 Ibid., p. 10. On the ‘technosphere’ concept, see also Peter K. Haff, ‘Technology as a geological phenomenon: Implications for human well-being’, in Colin N. Waters, Jan Zalasiewicz, Mark Williams, Michael A. Ellis, and Andrea M. Snelling (eds), A Stratigraphical Basis for the Anthropocene, Special Publication 395 (London: Geological Society, 2014), pp. 301–09.

43 Gorman, ‘The Anthropocene in the solar system’.

44 Nigel Clark, ‘Ex-orbitant globality’, Theory, Culture & Society, 22:5 (2005), pp. 165–85.

45 MacDonald, ‘Anti-Astropolitik’, p. 63. See also Johan Gärdebo, Agata Marzecova, and Scott Gabriel Knowles, ‘The orbital technosphere: The provision of meaning and matter by satellites’, The Anthropocene Review, 4:1 (2017), pp. 44–52; Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial technopolitics’, pp. 192–5.

46 Everett C. Dolman, Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in the Space Age (London: Frank Cass, 2002).

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

48 Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial astropolitics’.

49 MacDonald, ‘Anti-Astropolitik’, pp. 610–11. See also Jason Beery, ‘Unearthing global natures: Outer space and scalar politics’, Political Geography, 55 (2016), pp. 92–101; Oliver Dunnett, Andrew S. Maclaren, Julie Klinger, K. Maria D. Lane, and Daniel Sage, ‘Geographies of outer space: Progress and new opportunities’, Progress in Human Geography, 43:2 (2019), pp. 314–36; Lindy Newlove-Eriksson and Johan Eriksson, ‘Governance beyond the global: Who controls the extraterrestrial?’, Globalizations, 10:2 (2013), pp. 277–92.

50 Gärdebo et al., ‘The orbital technosphere’, p. 44.

51 Katarina Damjanov, ‘Of defunct satellites and other space debris: Media waste in the orbital commons’, Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42:1 (2017), p. 166.

52 Michael Sheehan, ‘Definition of space security’, in Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Peter L. Hays, Jana Robinson, Denis Moura, and Christian Giannopapa (eds), Handbook of Space Security (New York: Springer, 2015), pp. 7–21.

53 Gärdebo et al., ‘The orbital technosphere’, p. 48.

54 Giuliani Gregory, Hy Dao, and Andrea De Bono et al., ‘Live monitoring of Earth surface (LiMES): A framework for monitoring environmental changes from Earth observations’, Remote Sensing of Environment, 202 (2017), pp. 222–33.

55 Karen T. Litfin, ‘The gendered eye in the sky: a feminist perspective on Earth observation satellites’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 18:2 (1997), p. 26.

56 Giuliani et al., ‘Live monitoring of Earth surface’, pp. 222–3.

57 Satellite Vu, ‘Plastics, Pollution and Pirates: Satellite Vu Prepares to Tackle Humanity's Global Challenges’ (2018), available at: {https://spacewatch.global/2018/03/satellitevu_prepares_to_tackle_humanity_challenges/} accessed 4 January 2019.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 Ibid.

61 For social science analyses, see Monica M. Brannon, ‘Standardized spaces: Satellite imagery in the age of big data’, Configurations, 21:3 (2013), pp. 271–99; Jeremy W. Crampton, Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010); Daggett, ‘World-viewing as world-making’; Litfin, ‘The gendered eye’; Karen T. Litfin, ‘Satellites and sovereign knowledge: Remote sensing of the global environment’, in Karen T. Litfin (ed.), The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), pp. 192–222; Karen T. Litfin, ‘The status of the statistical state: Satellites and the diffusion of epistemic sovereignty’, Global Society, 13:1 (1999), pp. 95–116; Philipp Olbrich, ‘Technological expectations and global politics: Three waves of enthusiasm in non-governmental remote sensing’, Space Policy, 47 (2019), pp. 107–16; Peoples, ‘Extra-terrestrial astropolitics’; Nina Witjes and Philipp Olbrich, ‘A fragile transparency: Satellite imagery analysis, non-state actors, and visual representations of security’, Science and Public Policy, 44:4 (2017), pp. 524–34.

62 See also Oran R. Young and Masami Onoda, ‘Satellite Earth observations in environmental problem-solving’, in Masami Onoda and Oran R. Young (eds), Satellite Earth Observations and Their Impact on Society and Policy (Singapore: Springer Open, 2017), pp. 3–30.

63 Ayodele Adekunle Faiyetole, ‘Potentialities of space-based systems for monitoring climate policies and mitigation of climate process drivers’, Astropolitics, 16:1 (2018), pp. 28–48; Harini Nagendra, Paola Mairotab, and Carmela Marangic et al., ‘Satellite Earth observation data to identify anthropogenic pressures in selected protected areas’, International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 37 (2015), pp. 124–32.

64 Giuliani et al., ‘Live monitoring of Earth surface’, p. 232.

65 Matthew C. Hansen, Peter V. Potapov, and Rebecca Moore et al., ‘High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change’, Science, 342 (2013), p. 852.

66 Qing Ying, Matthew C. Hansen, and Peter V. Potapov et al., ‘Global bare ground gain from 2000 to 2012 using Landsat imagery’, Remote Sensing of Environment, 194 (2017), p. 162.

67 Noel Gorelick, Matt Hancher, and Mike Dixon et al., ‘Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone’, Remote Sensing of Environment, 202 (2017), pp. 18–27.

68 Google Earth Engine, ‘A Planetary-Scale Platform for Earth Science Data & Analysis’, available at: {https://earthengine.google.com/} accessed 4 January 2019.

69 Gorelick et al., ‘Google Earth Engine’, p. 18.

70 Olbrich, ‘Technological expectations’, p. 107; Brannon, ‘Standardized spaces’.

71 Akimisa Sumi, ‘Foreword’, in Onoda and Young (eds), Satellite Earth Observations, pp. vii–viii.

72 van Munster and Sylvest, ‘Introduction’.

73 Paul N. Edwards, ‘Afterworld’, in van Munster and Sylvest (eds), The Politics of Globality, pp. 190, 189.

74 GEO (Group on Earth Observations), available at: {http://www.earthobservations.org/index2.php} accessed 4 January 2019.

75 Robert S. Pearlman, ‘Last Delta II rocket launches NASA satellite to map Earth's ice with space laser’, Space.com (15 September 2018), available at: {https://www.space.com/41850-nasa-icesat2-laser-launches-on-last-delta-ii-rocket.html} accessed 22 May 2019.

76 GOSAT, ‘Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite GOSAT “IBUKI”’, available at: {http://www.gosat.nies.go.jp/en/} accessed 4 January 2019.

77 DigitalGlobe, ‘See A Better World with High Resolution Satellite Imagery’, available at: {https://www.digitalglobe.com/} accessed 4 January 2019.

78 International Advisory Board Workshop on Assessing the Impact of Satellite Earth Observation on Society and Policy, ‘Summary of conclusions’, in Onoda and Young (eds), Satellite Earth Observations, p. x.

79 Pamela A. Mack, Viewing the Earth: The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).

80 Hansen et al., ‘High-resolution global maps’, p. 852.

81 Gorelick et al., ‘Google Earth Engine’; Clement Atzberger, ‘Advances in remote sensing of agriculture: Context, description, existing operational monitoring systems and major information needs’, Remote Sensing, 5 (2013), pp. 949–81; Mariel Borowitz, Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017).

82 See, especially, Ray Harris and Ingo Baumann, ‘Open data policies and satellite Earth observation’, Space Policy, 32 (2015), pp. 44–53.

83 Ibid., p. 51.

84 Borowitz, Open Space.

85 Harris and Baumann, ‘Open data policies’, p. 52.

86 European Commission, ‘Explanatory Memorandum’, C(2013) 4311 final (7 December 2013), p. 14, available at: {http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/3/2013/EN/3-2013-4311-EN-F1-1.Pdf} accessed 22 May 2019.

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’.

90 See Stuart Elden, ‘Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power’, Political Geography, 34 (2013), pp. 35–51.

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.

92 Charles Frankel, The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

93 As identified by the originator of the ‘Anthropocene’ concept. See Paul J. Crutzen, ‘Geology of mankind’, Nature, 415 (2002), p. 23.

94 William Napier, ‘Hazards from comets and asteroids’, in Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković, Global Catastrophic Risks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 225.

95 Napier, ‘Hazards from comets and asteroids’, pp. 229–30.

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.

99 Daniel H. Deudney, ‘High impacts: Asteroidal utilization, collision avoidance, and the outer space regime’, in W. Henry Lambright (ed.), Space Policy in the Twenty-First Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p. 168.

100 Dolman, Astropolitik.

101 Deudney is, however, enthused by the secondary commercial functions of asteroid science and exploration; see also Daniel Deudney, ‘Forging missiles into spaceships’, World Policy Journal, 2:2 (1985), pp. 271–303.

102 Deudney, ‘High impacts’.

103 Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation and security constellations: Reconsidering scale in securitisation theory’, Review of International Studies, 35:2 (2009), p. 264.

104 James Clay Moltz, Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), p. 87.

105 Joan Johnson-Freese, Space as a Strategic Asset (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 236.

106 Bleddyn Bowen, ‘Cascading crises: Orbital debris and the widening of space security’, Astropolitics, 12:1 (2014), pp. 46–68.

107 Emma Kiele Frey, ‘The risks and impacts of space weather: Policy recommendations and initiatives’, Space Policy, 28:3 (2012), pp. 180–4.

108 Stefan A. Kaiser, ‘Legal and policy aspects of space situational awareness’, Space Policy, 31 (2015), pp. 5–12.

109 Charles Coombs, Spacetrack: Watchdog of the Skies (New York: William Morrow, 1969).

110 European Space Agency, ‘Space Situational Awareness’, available at: {https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Operations/Space_Situational_Awareness} accessed 22 May 2019.

111 Phillip A. Slann, ‘Anticipating uncertainty: the security of European critical outer space infrastructures’, Space Policy, 35 (2016), pp. 6–14.

112 Damjanov, ‘Of defunct satellites’.

113 Bertrand de Montluc, ‘SSA: Where does Europe stand now?’, Space Policy, 28:3 (2012), pp. 199–201.

114 NSTC (National Science and Technology Council), National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan (Washington, DC: White House, 2018).

115 NASA, ‘Planetary Defense Coordination Office’, available at: {https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview} accessed 22 May 2019.

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.

117 European Space Agency, ‘Risky Asteroids’, available at: {https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Safety/Risky_asteroids} accessed 22 May 2019.

118 ‘ESA's bug-eyed telescope to spot risky asteroids’, Space Daily (12 September 2014), available at: {http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/ESAs_bug_eyed_telescope_to_spot_risky_asteroids_999.html} accessed 22 May 2019.

119 IAWN, ‘Statement of Intent for Participation in the International Asteroid Warning Network’ (9 March 2014), available at: {http://iawn.net/documents/iawn_statement_of_intent.pdf} accessed 23 May 2019.

120 Linda Billings, ‘Words matter: A call for responsible communication about asteroid impact hazards and plans for planetary defense’, Space Policy, 33:1 (2015), pp. 8–12.

121 Center for Near Earth Object Studies, ‘Sentry: Earth Impact Monitoring’, available at: {https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/vi.html} accessed 22 May 2019.

122 Center for Near Earth Object Studies, ‘Planetary Defense Conference Exercise – 2019’, available at: {https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc19/} accessed 22 May 2019.

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).

125 Jinyuan Su, ‘Measures proposed for planetary defence: Obstacles in existing international law and implications for space arms control’, Space Policy, 34 (2015), pp. 1–5.

126 Jonathan Amos, ‘Osiris-Rex: NASA probe arrives at asteroid Bennu’, BBC News (3 December 2018), available at: {https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46428018} accessed 22 May 2019; Paul Rincon, ‘Hayabusa-2: Asteroid mission exploring a “rubble pile”’, BBC News (19 March 2019), available at: {https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47633649} accessed 22 May 2019.

127 NASA, ‘Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) Mission’, available at: {https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart} accessed 22 May 2019.

128 Available at: {https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc17/pdc17_pr1.pdf} accessed 22 May 2019.

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.

130 Havercroft and Duvall, ‘Critical astropolitics’; Weichert, Brandon J., ‘The high ground: the case for US space dominance’, Orbis, 61:2 (2017), pp. 227–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

131 Redfield, Peter, Space in the Tropics: From Convicts to Rockets in French Guiana (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheehan, The International Politics of Space, pp. 124-41; Sutch, Peter and Roberts, Peredur, ‘Outer space and neo-colonial injustice: Distributive justice and the continuous scramble for dominium’, International Journal of Social Economics, 46:11 (2019), pp. 1291–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

132 Mellor, Felicity, ‘Colliding worlds: Asteroid research and the legitimization of war in space’, Social Studies of Science, 37:4 (2007), pp. 499–531CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

133 Buzan and Wæver, ‘Macrosecuritisation’, p. 271.

134 Deudney ‘High impacts’, p. 167.

135 Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

136 Sheehan, ‘Defining space security’, pp. 19–20.

137 Deudney, Space, p. 52.

138 Peters, Kimberley, Steinberg, Philip, and Stratford, Elaine, ‘Introduction’, in Peters, Kimberley, Steinberg, Philip, and Stratford, Elaine (eds), Territory Beyond Terra (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

139 Deudney, Space, p. 52.

140 Mayer and Acuto, ‘The global governance of large technical systems’, p. 669.

141 Daggett, ‘World-viewing as world-making’.