Daniel Ceperley, a Space Entrepreneur, warned that a conflict could occur in the cosmos if military action is not stopped. LeoLabs’ CEO, who tracks satellite debris, believes the sector will become more important in the future as it becomes more commercially profitable.
Express.co.uk was informed by Mr Ceperley: “With all the new commercial developments and the growth in the space industry, I believe governments will also take advantage.”
“US Space Command has spoken a lot about space being contested, and I believe it’s true.
“I think there will continue to be a lot of military investment into space, and they are likely to leverage a lot on the commercial activities.
“So I think that it’s always going be a part of space industry.
He said: “I think that deterrence will be key though, militaries will continue to level up and calculate just need to be that if that aggressive action is actually taken, that might create debris.
“Hopefully, this can drive effective defense that we don’t have more weapons tests, don’t have more or don’t view a conflict in the space. B
“But I don’t see how we get rid the military element to space.
“It’s almost like any other domain, whether it be maritime, air or land. They are economically important, so nations should take an interest.
“And it spreads, so it starts out kind of like a shotgun explosion or two shotgunblasts like a cluster debris and then it spreads out over the course a few weeks into a shell around Earth.
“So you end with this type of debris shell, and so we saw from the collision that there was also another weapons testing in 2007 which created 1000s of pieces.
“A lot of it is around the altitude 750 kilometres or 800 kilometres. This altitude was used more heavily in the past, but now it has the highest debris population. Satellite operators can use other altitudes, which makes sense.
“That’s what we see when such events occur. It just becomes more costly and riskier to operate within a certain area.”
