Geopolitical implications of the new space race

Over the last few years, technological innovations, public and private investment and multiple international scientific collaborations have led to a profound transformation and rapid development of space activities. This calls for necessary assessments of the role that space, terra nullius par excellence, has acquired in today's geopolitical context, which is far more complex than in 1957, the year in which the first Sputnik 1 satellite was launched. Today, indeed, it is not only traditional political and defence motivations that motivate state investments, and above all, states are no longer the only “actors” in space: a growing number of private companies and organisations, motivated by economic-commercial interests, have entered what was once the reserved domain of states. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the growth of the space economy, highlighting how, while the EU appears to primarily focus on the cooperation pillar, the same doesn't seem to apply to China and the United States, the two main actors, whose space policies reproduce each other's globalization models. An initial research phase focusing on the description of the space economy and the study of the relevant literature is followed by a twofold quantitative and qualitative analysis, through which we intend to outline some of the geopolitical implications behind recent space developments.