The vastness of space has the potential to lull users into a false and dangerous sense of complacency. Once this blissful ignorance is penetrated, the impulse is often to immediately draft and promulgate regulations to set order in place. Add to this the international nature of space exploration and use, and the appetite of many regulatory theorists for immediate, top-down, global solutions is whetted. Improving orbital safety is serious. Quality of life on Earth relies on applications and services provided by satellite operations. However, the baseline assumptions upon which governance choices rely are undergoing rapid and intrinsic change. Technology advances have increased the number of satellites, particularly in low Earth orbit. Two examples are miniaturization and multiple deployments from a single launch. The increase in the number of active satellites adds to the danger represented by an enormous amount of debris, the largest percentage of which is lethal non-trackable debris. Now, add to the mix the reality that these smaller satellites sharing the orbital environment with all of this debris are now moving around and, in one business model, moving around autonomously driven by algorithms that are not shared with all other operators. The rules that currently govern are primarily focused on mitigation of the creation of more debris. While mitigation once relied upon design and end of life requirements, the conversation about space safety is now beginning to include protocols for improved situational awareness data and noticing and collision avoidance capabilities. While it is clear that more standards, requirements, and, ultimately, regulations are needed, there are a number of approaches to the development of effective rules that are well-rationalized, enforceable, or of such obvious benefit to all that they are followed voluntarily. Not all rules are created equally. Only some will actually improve the safety of the space operations environment. Effective norms and rules in this inherently international situation will also rely heavily upon agreement and alignment among regulators of multiple jurisdictions. Strict national rules governing a satellite operator in an orbital location near a satellite from a more lenient jurisdiction will not achieve the desired outcome. Planning, coordination, and transparent cooperation will. There is a need for diverse discussion among the many involved stakeholders and disciplines, utilizing diplomacy and building capacity where needed, to collaborate internationally to make space safer. This is the foundational legacy of international cooperation upon which our legal framework is built.

Effective space traffic management is an essential prerequisite for sustainable long-term human activities in Earth orbits in the long-term. While there are various understandings and definitions of STM, the essence of the concept usually concerns an effort to devise an international framework that would enhance the safety of accessing and using space and facilitate the sustainability of the space operational environment in the long-term. The problem of STM today is not that it would be non-existent. In fact, we already have frameworks for the management of space traffic. The problem is that our current STM framework is insufficient and not adapted to future operational challenges associated with the quickly evolving space sector. Improving our STM efforts should be based on the three key ingredients: Firstly, we need to significantly enhance our technical capabilities to better manage the growing risks in orbit, especially the risk of collisions. In particular, space surveillance and space situational awareness needs to further improve to reduce the uncertainties associated with positions and trajectories of space objects, including the very small ones, often impossible to see with our current sensors. In addition to SST and SSA, the need for better technical capabilities also concerns all phases of space mission lifecycle, including active debris removal, in order to reduce debris-generating occasions. Secondly, we need to enhance our normative landscapes governing and regulating the conduct of space activities. STM is largely about the rules of behaviour, and the rulemaking segment has to be an integral part of improving our current STM framework. The point here is not necessarily about just a stricter regulatory regime. It is about updating our regulatory requirements through addressing the gaps and missing pieces in contemporary regulations (e.g. rules for handling collision avoidance manoeuvres and procedures) in a smart way, in which we can enhance the notion of safety without excessively increasing the cost of access to space. Lastly, we need to better coordinate our activities in space with other actors that share this very same operational environment as we do. Near-Earth space, in particular at lower orbits in LEO, is a confined, highly dynamic environment governed by unavoidable laws of physics. The more we venture and operate there, the more we need to acknowledge the activities of others and make sure that we do the best we can in exchanging technical and operational information, maintaining functional lines of communication and implementing best practices.