Imagine standing outside on a clear night and looking up. The stars feel distant, cold, and impossibly remote from your daily life. You have bills to pay, food to buy, a job to do. What does outer space have to do with any of that?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

Every time you use your phone's navigation system to find a restaurant, every time a farmer uses satellite data to decide when to water crops, every time a disaster response team tracks a flood from orbit, space is working quietly on your behalf. And now, a new research framework is arguing that the way we approach space exploration needs a fundamental rethink. Not just for scientists or governments, but for all of us.

The Big Idea: Three Things That Belong Together

A researcher from France has developed what he calls the SSR framework. SSR stands for Space, Sustainability, and Regionalism. At first glance, these three words might seem like an odd trio. But the argument is compelling: when countries pool their resources, commit to taking care of the planet, and build space programmes together rather than racing each other to the stars, everyone wins.

The framework is visualised as a triangle. Each corner represents one of the three ideas. The sides of the triangle show how each pair of ideas connects with the other. And at the very centre of the triangle sits the sweet spot where all three ideas come together perfectly.

Think of it like a three legged stool. Take one leg away and the whole thing collapses. Space, sustainability, and regionalism each need the other two to function at their best.

Why Space Photos Changed the World

To understand why this matters, we need to go back to Christmas Eve, 1968. Three astronauts aboard Apollo 8 became the first humans to see the Earth rise above the lunar horizon. The photographs they took became some of the most reproduced images in human history.

Those photos did something unexpected. People everywhere looked at this small, blue marble floating in the vast darkness of space and suddenly understood, maybe for the first time, just how fragile and precious our home truly is. The mission had gone to explore the Moon. It ended up rediscovering the Earth.

That shift in perspective planted seeds. Environmental movements grew. People began asking whether we were taking care of our planet well enough.

Then, in 1985, NASA satellites captured something alarming. Using special imaging techniques, scientists spotted a massive hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. These were not just data points on a graph. They were visible, startling images that anyone could look at and feel afraid. The world responded. Within two years, 196 nations signed the Montreal Protocol, banning the chemicals responsible for the damage. Scientists now predict the ozone layer will recover to its pre 1980 levels by the middle of this century.

This is one of the clearest examples of space technology driving real world environmental action. Seeing was believing.

Space Is Not Just About Rockets

Today, satellites do far more than take impressive photographs. They monitor deforestation in the Amazon. They track illegal fishing in remote oceans. They give farmers precise information about soil conditions. They help cities plan for rising sea levels and extreme weather.

More than 100 countries and organisations now share Earth observation data through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, known as GEOSS. And new technologies like artificial intelligence are making this data even more powerful and easier to use.

But here is the uncomfortable truth that the research does not shy away from: space itself has a sustainability problem.

By 2032, analysts forecast that roughly 2,800 satellites will be launched every single year. That is about 8 satellites every day and around 4 tons of mass entering orbit daily. Old satellites and rocket parts are piling up in orbit, creating a dangerous cloud of debris that threatens working satellites and even poses risks to people and property on Earth when pieces fall back through the atmosphere. Certain orbits could eventually become too cluttered to use safely.

Space tourism, meanwhile, adds another layer of concern. While a handful of billionaires celebrated their trips to the edge of space in 2021 and 2022, scientists pointed out that rocket exhaust poses real risks to the ozone layer we worked so hard to protect. There are currently no adequate international rules governing this.

The research is clear: the space industry must apply the same sustainability principles to itself that it helps others apply on Earth.

Why Cooperation Beats Competition

Here is where regionalism enters the picture.

For most of the history of space exploration, it has been a competition. The United States and the Soviet Union raced each other to the Moon. Countries jealously guarded their satellite technologies because rockets and guidance systems have obvious military applications. The result has been a fragmented world of national space programmes, each doing their own thing, often duplicating efforts and wasting resources.

But Europe took a different path.

Back in the 1960s, individual European countries like France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy each tried to run their own space programmes. France even became the third country in history to independently launch a satellite, in 1965. But it quickly became clear that no single European nation could match the United States or the Soviet Union on its own. The solution was to work together.

Over decades, these national efforts eventually combined into the European Space Agency, or ESA. Then, the European Union entered the picture, bringing its substantial political and financial power to support space ambitions. Today, Europe collectively spends nearly 10 billion euros every year on space. That is more than most individual nations on Earth spend, and it is unique in the world as a genuinely regional space programme covering not just research and planning but actually building, launching, and operating satellites.

No other region on the planet does this at this level. The Americas, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East all have space agencies and growing ambitions, but they have not yet achieved the depth of collaboration that Europe has built.

Two Programmes That Prove the Point

The research uses two specific European programmes to show the SSR framework in action.

Galileo is Europe's own satellite navigation system. You probably use it every day without knowing it, because it works alongside GPS in your smartphone. Unlike GPS, which is controlled by the American military, Galileo is a civilian system built and run by Europeans for peaceful purposes. It provides highly accurate positioning services worldwide. It helps planes land safely, keeps delivery trucks on schedule, supports wildlife tracking, and enables precision farming that reduces waste and environmental damage.

The decision to build Galileo was actually sparked by a concern that Europe was becoming too dependent on a foreign, military controlled navigation system. A 1993 European Commission policy document was the first to propose Europe building its own space infrastructure. Galileo was born from that vision.

Copernicus is Europe's Earth observation programme, and it might be the most directly useful space programme for ordinary people anywhere in the world. It uses a constellation of satellites called Sentinels to monitor the environment constantly. It tracks climate change, supports disaster response teams during floods and wildfires, monitors deforestation, and helps policymakers make informed decisions about protecting natural resources. All of its data is available completely free of charge to anyone who wants it.

Copernicus began as a meeting in a small Italian town called Baveno in 1998, where the leaders of major European space agencies sat down to figure out how Europe could monitor its own environment from space without depending on others. That conversation eventually produced one of the world's most powerful environmental monitoring tools.

Both programmes are living proof that when countries cooperate around shared goals, the results can be extraordinary.

Scoring the World: Who Is Doing Best?

The research does not just make theoretical arguments. It actually scores seven global regions based on how well they perform across all three areas of the framework: space capabilities, sustainability progress, and regional cooperation.

The scoring system is transparent. Space performance is largely based on how much governments actually spend on space programmes, with bonus points for having regional cooperative programmes. Sustainability scores come from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals index. Regional integration scores reflect how deeply countries within each region work together politically, economically, and legally.

The results paint a clear picture.

Europe sits at the top. It has strong space capabilities, leads the world in sustainability policy, and has by far the deepest regional integration of any region on Earth.

North America and the Asia Pacific region both have impressive national space programmes, home to NASA, the Chinese space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation, and Japan's space agency. But their regional cooperation is limited, and their sustainability scores, while decent, do not match Europe's comprehensive approach.

Russia's region, Northern Eurasia, has a proud space history but scores poorly on sustainability and regional integration, particularly given recent geopolitical events.

Africa, South America, and the Middle East are all developing their space ambitions, and they score in the lower tier overall. The Middle East is investing heavily in prestigious space projects. Africa and South America are more focused on using space for development goals, which the research views as a potentially more sustainable and practical path. Interestingly, the African Union and the newly established African Space Agency are drawing direct inspiration from the European model.

When War Changed Everything

For decades, Europe's space story was one of peaceful cooperation. Then, in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.

That invasion forced Europe to confront an uncomfortable reality. Space infrastructure that had been designed purely for civilian use, weather monitoring, navigation, environmental observation, also has obvious military value. Enemy forces can use satellite data to plan attacks. Space systems can be targeted to disable communications. Defending Europe now means defending European satellites.

In response, the European Union published its first ever Space Strategy for Security and Defence in 2024. This was a major step, formally acknowledging that space is a strategic domain requiring protection.

The research is careful to note that this does not represent a betrayal of the SSR framework's peaceful principles. Europe has always known its space systems have dual use potential. The new strategy simply makes this explicit and builds protective measures around it. The core commitment to civilian use, sustainability, and regional cooperation remains intact. In fact, the new strategy strengthens regional defence cooperation in ways that are consistent with the SSR framework's emphasis on working together rather than going it alone.

What This Means for the Rest of Us

So why should you, sitting far from any rocket launch site, care about any of this?

Because the choices governments make about space policy affect your daily life directly. The navigation app on your phone, the weather forecast you checked this morning, the early warning system that gave coastal communities time to evacuate before a hurricane, these all depend on satellites. The rules governing how those satellites are built, launched, and operated matter enormously.

The SSR framework is essentially arguing for a smarter, kinder way of doing space. Instead of nations racing each other for prestige or military advantage, regions of countries could pool their resources, agree to sustainable practices, and build space programmes that serve ordinary people rather than national egos.

This is not utopian dreaming. Europe has already done it. And the rest of the world is watching.

The researchers' conclusion is straightforward: cooperation beats competition, sustainability is not optional, and no country can afford to do space alone. Whether you live in Asia, Africa, South America, or anywhere else, the European model offers a template that can be adapted and adopted.

Space, it turns out, does not belong to the most powerful nation. It belongs to all of us. And if we manage it wisely together, it can help us take better care of the only home we have ever known.

Publication Details: Year of Online Publication: 2025 Journal: Space Policy Publisher: Elsevier DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2025.101704

Credit & Disclaimer: This article is based on the peer reviewed research paper. All scientific facts, findings, and conclusions presented in this article are drawn directly from the original research paper. Readers are strongly encouraged to consult the full research article for complete details, data, and factual information.