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The Space Hotline and the SG Race
[Re]Group Weekend Digest
Diplomacy at 17,000 mph
Two days before the UN’s annual space forum in Vienna, the hotline rang. The Malaysian Space Agency had a problem: an “urgent conjunction warning.”
A what? In plain English, one of their satellites was heading toward a collision at just under 17,000 mph. They urgently needed to contact the owner of the oncoming satellite to coordinate an evasion maneuver, but they couldn’t just pick up the phone. The owner was the government of North Korea.
As I explored in a recent [Re]Group essay, Nothing on Earth, the real danger in space isn’t a single crash, but what follows: collisions breeding more collisions, making our orbits impassable as they fill up with shrapnel.
Missing by Meters
Most people wonder whether the UN can play any relevant role in space diplomacy, admits Aarti Holla-Maini, who left the commercial sector to run the UN’s Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA). But when Kuala Lumpur realized they had no way to reach Pyongyang, it was UNOOSA they called.
Holla-Maini’s team asked the Chinese Embassy in Vienna to pass a warning to North Korea. It worked. Pyongyang executed an emergency maneuver. The satellites missed each other by just 75 meters. Given the speed at which satellites move, that is the equivalent of a car passing a cyclist with a two-millimeter margin of error.
Right now, frantic phone calls are all we have. There is no international space police.
Space Race
UNISPACE IV is supposed to change that.
Today, the rules of orbit are dictated by a Cold War-era framework managed by a Vienna-based committee, COPUOS, which operates strictly by consensus, alongside an emerging patchwork of national standards, voluntary commitments, and informal alliances.
The UN is hoping to hold its first space summit of the 21st century in Vienna next year, starting on July 12. It also marks the 60th birthday of the UN’s original Cold War space treaty.
The summit’s champions, led by Morocco and Italy, view it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to update the governance framework for space, tackling urgent challenges like orbital traffic coordination, debris mitigation, and the looming rush for lunar resources.
If it happens, it will be an early test in the diary of the next UN Secretary-General — though Member States are still arguing over the agenda, participation, and funding. Everything, in other words.
Aarti Holla-Maini
Five Minutes on the Future of Space
To understand the stakes, we wanted to hear from the person fielding calls from panicking satellite owners. Here is what Holla-Maini had to say.
[Re]Group: You argue that space is critical infrastructure, but it is not treated with the same urgency as climate change or AI. Why do we need to be paying attention right now?
Aarti Holla-Maini: We take so much for granted. People don’t realize that everything, from global financial markets to electricity grids, relies on the time-stamping system of atomic clocks on navigation satellites, be they Galileo, GPS, or others. They are also the only way to measure and monitor essential climate variables. If we start seeing collisions because of congestion, there’s a real risk that space becomes unusable for decades to come.
“Switch off AI for a day, the world isn’t going to fall apart. Switch off space for a day, and you will have chaos the world over.”
[Re]Group: I think we underestimate how fast space is changing. Next year’s proposed UN space summit, UNISPACE IV, is supposed to address threats that simply didn’t exist a decade ago. But is the multilateral system moving too slowly?
Aarti Holla-Maini: Launches are happening every week now instead of 12 times a year. Is the system slow? Sure. Multilateralism takes time because we don’t vote in Vienna; everything is by consensus. But every Member State sits on an equal footing — major space-faring nation or tiny island state. Same weight, no industry around the table, which means no money influencing the process.
But progress is happening on the strands where we need it to. Last year, the committee established an Expert Group on Space Situational Awareness to prevent collisions — the fastest decision it has ever made. We are also looking at the moon. It is one-sixth the size of Earth, so you’re going to have a space sustainability problem there far faster if multiple entities aren’t coordinating.
“To help diplomats understand the stakes, we run tabletop exercises. I sit in cafes and do them with ambassadors. I take their mug and my mug and say, 'Look, that's your satellite. This is mine.'”
[Re]Group: There are currently six candidates running to be the next UN Secretary-General. If you had them around a table, what would you tell them you need from whomever takes office on January 1?
Aarti Holla-Maini: I need the next Secretary-General to understand that space is critical infrastructure. It is essential for achieving every single one of the SDGs. And they need to recognize that COPUOS is the only committee, and UNOOSA the only office, able to genuinely work to prevent space from becoming the next arena for conflict.
Our mandate is broad and growing organically. We’ve added 13 Member States to the committee in the last two and a half years. We are now being contacted by Member States who are having debris land on their territories, and we have to explain their rights and obligations and use it as an opportunity to reinforce the rule of law in space. On top of that, we have 65 countries waiting for space law missions from UNOOSA, many wanting to establish their own spaceports.
“I need an SG who understands that and who adequately equips UNOOSA in terms of its status, size, and budget so we can do our job. All of these things fall under our mandate.”
Space Diplomacy
Reading List
If Holla-Maini’s warnings have you looking up anxiously at the sky, here’s what to read on the rapidly diversifying ecosystem of space governance:
The Coalition Era of Space Law: With the UN struggling to enforce a single global rulebook, space governance is fracturing into competing geopolitical "clubs." For a primer, check out this essay from Kármán Line.
The Diplomacy of Manufacturing: With tens of thousands of new satellites expected by the early 2030s, this piece by Hamdullah Mohib for the World Economic Forum explores how countries are using joint-venture manufacturing and shared industrial standards as a backdoor form of space diplomacy.
Substack in Space: Check out Neal Stephenson’s long-form thoughts on technology, space, and the future. Plus, Peter Hague’s Planetocracy on the space powers he believes “will dominate the rest of the 21st century — and beyond.”
The SG Roundup
With the UN Security Council’s straw polls scheduled to begin on July 30, candidates are flying around the world and shoring up support from Council members.
In parallel, the main upcoming opportunity for candidates to share their platforms publicly is at the UN Town Hall: The Next Secretary-General in the General Assembly Hall on Thursday, July 23 from 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Read our guide to key public events
To secure Security Council votes, the 1 for 8 Billion campaign asks whether candidates will promise key spots in their senior team to nationals of certain countries.
Their recently published report, Backroom Deals: The Trade in Promises for Support Between Member States and Candidates for UN Secretary-General, presents evidence that “all five permanent members of the Security Council have unduly compromised the independence of candidates over the course of the UN’s history.”
The Improvisation Playbook
From the Archive
If Holla-Maini’s backdoor satellite diplomacy sounds familiar, it is because multilateral improvisation is a time-honored UN tradition.
In one of our launch [Re]Group essays, Elizabeth Cousens argued that the current geopolitical gridlock isn’t a crisis of demand for global cooperation — it’s a crisis of supply.
The next Secretary-General will need an innovator’s mindset — “spotting fleeting openings, building uncommon coalitions, and attracting the political, financial, and human resources to deliver results.”
Read The Multilateralist’s Paradox and Beyond the Wrecking Ball for more. If you want to know what a successful UN looks like in an age of turbulence, this is the playbook.
