Space law: what actions for a viable scenario?

Recently, space has been seeing a significant expansion of human activities. Over the past five years, business volume has increased by an average of around 9% annually, outpacing global GDP growth and reaching a market value of over USD 600 billion in 2025 (source: Space Industry Statistics & Facts 2026 | SpaceNexus). At the same time, the number of objects launched into space has increased by a factor of ten over the last decade (source: The Growth of the Space Economy).

This growth is expected to continue in the coming years, as this new domain promises substantial economic returns through the provision of services increasingly in demand by the general public, as well as through new potential prospects that are beginning to emerge, such as the colonisation of the Moon.

As the economy expands, so do the actions and interactions between individuals, companies and states — and, with them, the possibility of disputes. Moreover, unrestricted business activity in the space sector, if not properly regulated, could generate risks for society as a whole, as well as dangers for individuals or even for multiple sovereign states.

At the same time, regulation in this field cannot be purely restrictive. Beyond the economic prosperity that the Space Economy promises to generate — which naturally leads legislators to view it favourably — there is a strong likelihood that overly burdensome regulation will lead to a shift in investment towards more accessible jurisdictions.

These brief considerations offer a first sense of the complexity of a new universe that must be managed and that, by its very nature, can only be shared among different state systems. Ultimately, the uniqueness of space activities means that the only segment that can truly be governed is the terrestrial one. Once objects are inside orbits or beyond, in the so-called deep space, they tend to escape any single jurisdiction, unless that jurisdiction is collective.
These are the themes that the speaker and panellists will explore, covering legal, legislative, industrial and defence-related perspectives, with the aim of helping to clarify certain aspects of a complex process that is still far from being fully resolved.