Op-ed | Protecting Space Assets Above to Assert Geopolitical Dominance Below
Jim Reilly is a former NASA astronaut and current executive adviser at Booz Allen Hamilton. Chris Bogdan is Booz Allen’s senior vice president for the firm’s aerospace business.
While our space assets orbit the Earth hundreds of miles above, the invasion of Ukraine has shown that the space domain is not above deteriorating geopolitical conditions. In fact, the ongoing conflict has further solidified the critical role of space in modern warfighting and national security, highlighting that data collected from space assets is mission-critical for U.S. intelligence and defense operations—in addition to its ability to illustrate a clear picture of the situation to the public. In the past, most space-based overhead imagery, communications and data related to national security were...