The space race from the 1950s until the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually ended in a tie. Maybe not totally a tie, but the advent of the International Space Station (ISS) and the amount of training performed at Star City just outside of Moscow by both Russians and Americans in preparation for their missions give the appearance that the former rivalry is now a cooperative event. Over the last few years, space is becoming the focus of many nations from a security perspective. Merom’s succinct summation of the cost of using offensive force is a driving reason for the new focus on space either from the standpoint of dominance or of countering other nations’ use of it.This time, instead of claiming dominance by planting a flag on the moon, the idea of controlling a domain that is still not truly understood provides a level of security impacting many areas, like the Global Positioning System (GPS), Positioning, Navigating, and Timing (PNT), and Satellite Communication (SATCOM) (Harrison et al. 2018; Weeden and Sampson 2018). And it is China and Russia that are currently leading the charge of attempting to operationalize and weaponize space to project power.
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Dana Ogle: China/Russia space threat on the horizon?
This NASA image obtained Nov. 7, 2018 shows what an astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) captured in this photograph while orbiting at an altitude of more than 250 miles over Australia on Oct. 7, 2018.
