Insight – A Retrospective on Strengthening Space Safety, Sustainability, and Security in 2025
Secure World Foundation’s guiding vision, the conviction that animates our staff in their work every day, is that space activities are a vital contributor to socioeconomic development and human and environmental security on Earth. We give expression to this vision by working with governments, industry, international organizations, and civil society to develop and promote ideas and actions for international collaboration that achieve the secure, sustainable, and peaceful uses of outer space, benefitting Earth and all its peoples. At a programmatic level, this high-level vision translates into programs focusing on the three S’s of outer space: space safety, space sustainability, and space security.
Over the past twenty years, Secure World Foundation has been at the forefront of our evolving understanding of the three S’s. Initially thought of as only a concern for the most advanced space nations, there is now a growing understanding of the dangers of unsafe or irresponsible behavior and armed conflict in space among a much wider group of State and non-State space actors, and of the importance of strengthening the rule of law in outer space to ensure that space continues to be a domain for peaceful use and exploration by all nations. Wherever one looks across this expanding envelope of our evolving understanding of space sustainability, space safety, and space security, the Secure World Foundation is there, raising awareness of issues, proposing new ideas, and facilitating multi-stakeholder dialogues.
Against a backdrop of heightened geopolitical tensions and rising orbital congestion from active satellites and space debris, the Foundation’s mission is now more relevant and urgent than ever. As we approach the end of 2025, the number of active satellites in space has reached 14,000, and the growth in space activities shows no sign of abating. The orbital debris population also keeps rising, and with it, concerns that it is just a matter of time before we have a catastrophic collision or breakup event in orbit that will start an unstoppable cascade of further debris-producing collisions.
Secure World’s activities fall into one of four broad categories, namely:
- (i) cooperative governance of space activities;
- (ii) peace, stability, and safety in outer space;
- (iii) the sustainable and prosperous uses of outer space; and
- (iv) space activities in support of human and environmental security.
The Foundation supports effective multilateralism, convenes multi-stakeholder dialogues, performs and publishes research, and promotes the development of cooperative solutions for space sustainability.
During the year, Secure World convened dialogues on a variety of 3S topics. The largest convening was the 7th Summit for Space Sustainability, held on October 22-23 in Paris, France, and co-hosted by the French space agency and several French government ministries. This year’s program focused on practical steps to keep space usable. Nearly 500 participants, in person and online, joined to discuss how policy, technology, and market design work together. Speakers and panels covered debris mitigation and removal, space traffic coordination, atmospheric reentry impacts, spectrum management, and the economics of sustainability. Sessions also examined dual-use tension points, standards and metrics, and how national initiatives connect to multilateral work at COPUOS and the ITU. Recordings of all sessions are available on the conference website and our YouTube Channel.
Space security continued to grow in salience this year, fueled by ongoing geopolitical tensions among the major space powers. Secure World continued to support informed dialogues on space security in various ways. In April, we released the 2025 edition of the Global Counterspace Capabilities report, which is the most comprehensive unclassified collection of material on this topic. During the second half of 2025, Secure World partnered with the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) to organize the 2025 Outer Space Security Conference, held in Geneva, Switzerland. The conference was cosponsored by the governments of China, France, Norway, Russia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which underscores the importance attached to this topic by a growing number of countries.
As space becomes more congested, the topics of space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic coordination are rising in salience. Secure World has been at the forefront of international conversations on both of these topics. In October, SWF, together with the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, convened a gathering of space operators and SSA data providers in New York under Chatham House rules to discuss the types of information that should be shared among satellite operators to enhance spaceflight safety.
For decades, space activities were defined and led by national agencies, but private sector investment is now playing an increasing role in shaping the evolution of the space arena with business models that are attracting new investors into the space sector. These new-to-space investors often do not understand that space is a fragile domain, and that poor investment decisions can potentially have long-lasting negative consequences for all space users; consequences that extend far beyond just financial losses to the investors directly involved in a given commercial space activity. With this in mind, to encourage informed and responsible investment in the space sector, we developed a guidebook aimed at investment analysts with little or no space investment experience on the principles of responsible investment in the space sector. This new resource will be launched among the investment community early in the New Year.
In 2026, we will continue to work in our traditional areas of activity, but also add some new topics, one of which will be to illuminate areas of risk, explore shared concerns, and identify pathways for coordination at the nexus of space and nuclear strategic stability issues. This activity will be done in partnership with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace through a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The 2026 Summit for Space Sustainability will be held November 4-5, 2026, in Brasília in partnership with the Brazilian Space Agency. This will be our first Summit for Space Sustainability in the southern hemisphere and in Latin America, bringing the perspectives of the region to the 3S2 conversation. We look forward to seeing many of you in our growing Summit community in Brasília next November.
In closing, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our partners and sponsors who worked with us during 2025. We look forward to working with many of you again in 2026 to advance the safety, security, and sustainability of space activities for the benefit of all people on Earth.
Dr. Peter Martinez is the Executive Director of the Secure World Foundation. He has extensive experience in multilateral space diplomacy, space policy formulation and space regulation. He also has extensive experience in capacity building in space science and technology and in workforce development.
