Outer space technologies, including rockets, satellites, and their supporting infrastructure, are vital to modern societies. They enable critical services such as telecommunications, internet access, mapping, geolocation, environmental monitoring, and weather forecasting. These systems also play essential roles in national defense, supporting intelligence collection, nuclear early warning, and precision weapon targeting. As such, they are key to military, environmental, and human security, and represent a pillar of economic power.

“We as a global community need to be paying more attention to is the real genuine risks we have of making the Earth orbital environment unsustainable from a practical operational perspective by allowing too many satellites to be put into orbit and not managing the debris population, both from dead satellites and the potential smaller objects that come from collisions and fragmentation events.” states Adam Bower during his interview.

Adam Bowers’ research focuses on understanding and advancing the governance of outer space, particularly the regulation of military space operations. I examine how international norms and legal rules are shaped and contested, using empirical data to analyze these processes. My work aims to integrate space governance into global politics studies, providing actionable insights to policymakers and stakeholders to prevent conflict and foster collaboration in outer space.