Remember Tim Marshall’s Prisoners of Geography and follow up Future of Geography? He brilliantly showed how mountains, rivers, and coastlines shape nations and their destinies. Well, hold onto your spacesuits, because the final frontier is about to become the ultimate geopolitical battleground. What was once the stuff of science fiction is now headline news: spy satellites playing lunar peek-a-boo, space mining for trillion-dollar asteroids, and boots on Mars – all within our lifetime.  

Forget the Cold War; this is the Cosmic Cold War. And it’s heating up faster than a rocket re-entering the atmosphere. Just this week, the world’s space agencies huddled in Milan, hatching plans for lunar outposts and orbital dominance. It’s like a real-life Star Wars summit, only with more PowerPoint presentations and slightly less Death Star construction.  

The Americans, ever the pioneers, are rallying allies for their Artemis program, aiming to put the first woman and person of colour on the moon. Think of it as the ultimate “We choose to go to the Moon” speech, but with a more diverse cast and a hefty dose of international collaboration. Meanwhile, the Chinese, not to be outdone, are building their own space station, the Tiangong, a shining symbol of their growing technological prowess and ambition. And the Russians… well, let’s just say they weren’t invited to the party this time. Seems like invading your neighbour puts a bit of a damper on your spacefaring social calendar.  

But it’s not just nations vying for cosmic supremacy. Private companies are blasting off too, scrambling to keep up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is already dominating the orbital lanes like a cosmic Amazon delivery service. Imagine a future where instead of next-day delivery, you get next-orbit delivery. “Need a new smartphone? No problem, we’ll launch it into space and have it parachuted to your doorstep in 30 minutes!”

This new space race is about more than just bragging rights. It’s about resources, strategic advantage, and the future of humanity. Who controls the moon controls the high ground of the solar system. Who mines the asteroids controls the raw materials of tomorrow. And who establishes the first permanent lunar base might just get to write the rules for the next chapter of human history.

It seems we humans have a knack for taking our squabbles wherever we go. We’ve polluted the Earth, carved it up into competing territories, and now we’re setting our sights on the stars. As Douglas Adams might have put it, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. And apparently, there’s not enough room for all of us to behave ourselves.”

So buckle up, Earthlings. The race for space is on, and it’s going to be a wild ride. Let’s just hope we don’t end up exporting our terrestrial troubles to the rest of the universe. After all, the cosmos has enough black holes already. And the last thing we need is to turn the Milky Way into a cosmic junkyard, littered with the debris of our earthly conflicts.

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The Facts

The International Astronautical Congress (IAC) since 1950 has been a venue for the scientists, engineers, companies and political leaders of spacefaring nations to discuss cooperation, even in times of heightened tensions among world powers. This year’s conference will put the space minds of two top rivals – the U.S. and China – under one roof. But Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, a storied power now isolated from the West after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, will have no official presence, highlighting the latest fault lines in space cooperation. Nearly all of the 77 member countries of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF), the non-profit that organises IAC, have turned out for talks on what attendees expect will touch heavily on lunar exploration, NASA’s growing coalition of countries under its Artemis moon program and Europe’s pressing need for more sovereign access to space. NASA administrator Bill Nelson is expected to rally support at IAC for agency’s strategy to tap private companies to replace the ageing International Space Station after its 2030 retirement. The more than two-decade old orbiting science laboratory has been a symbol of space diplomacy led primarily by the U.S. and Russia, despite conflicts on Earth. NASA, which is investing billions of dollars in its flagship Artemis moon program, has been keen on maintaining a presence in low-Earth orbit to compete with China’s Tiangong space station, which has continuously housed Chinese astronauts for three years. The U.S. and China are also racing to land this decade the first humans on the moon since the last American Apollo mission in 1972. The two space powers are aggressively courting partner countries and leaning heavily on private companies for their moon programs, shaping the space objectives of smaller space agencies along the way.

Musk’s SpaceX and its workhorse Falcon 9 is relied upon by much of the Western world for accessing space, driving countries—including the U.S.—to encourage new space upstarts that can offer more affordable rockets. And SpaceX’s growing Starlink internet network has made the company the world’s largest satellite operator. Europe regained un-crewed access to orbit with the test flight of its Ariane 6 launcher in July. But capacity remains constrained by the cutting of ties with Russia, whose Soyuz rockets played a key role for the continent before the Ukraine war. Europe’s satellite manufacturing industry is also facing growing pressures as a once-thriving market for its large, bespoke geostationary satellites faces heavy pressure from constellations in low Earth orbit such as SpaceX’s Starlink. Italy’s Leonardo, one of the hosts of the week-long event, has called for a new strategy for the space sector embracing its French joint venture partner Thales and their main rival in satellite manufacturing, Airbus. Industry sources say the three companies are involved in preliminary talks about combining their satellite activities, but much will depend on the attitude of a new European Commission, which blocked past efforts to forge a single player. European strategists argue space is a worldwide market, and forcing European companies to preserve choice within the same region misses the bigger picture of global competition. NASA’s effort to seed privately built replacements to the ISS is driving some transatlantic tie-ups, such as the joint venture formed this year between Airbus and U.S. space operations firm Voyager to help capture European demand for low-Earth orbit research and operations.