423 Miguel Yagües Palazón Environmental Challenges in Outer Space in the... moderation or their elimination, given the indiscriminate risks that these weapons pose to the assets of other space actors. However, while democratisation is beneficial, it can also have negative effects, with space assets being employed by non-democratic states to strengthen their regimes, such as the use of observation satellites for the pur-pose of monitoring enemy forces. This combination of benign and negative scenarios also exists in relation to the en-trance of private actors. One of the positive consequences is the possibility of private agents such as companies or universities purchasing and acquiring “direct ownership” of satellites. This process has accelerated in recent years with the proliferation of nanosats –satellites of between one and ten kilograms– and the standard CubeSat, measuring ten square centimetres, weighing 1.3 kilograms, with a price tag of $100,000. This prolife-ration means that over the second half of the present decade, more than 1,000 nanosats are expected to be launched into space.125 The distribution of nanosats represents a great scientific advance on account of their capacity to carry out countless number of expe-riments and studies on solar and cosmic radiation or research on space meteorology. However, the reverse effect is also possible if this technology falls into the hands of cri-minals or terrorists who could avail of reconnaissance nanosats with an image resolution of up to 50 centimetres (50 cm x 50 cm per pixel is the limit that the United States has imposed on commercial satellites). On the other hand, having seen the concerns already raised by private actors in relation to space security and their decisions to adopt security measures, it seems likely that sooner or later they will exercise pressure on their govern-ments urging them to limit their ASAT programmes. Likewise, private agents can gal-vanise policymakers into reviewing space law and initiating a “liberal” legislative process that addresses such sensitive issues as property rights on the Moon or on Mars. However, it may also be that the new privatisation trends could stimulate a kind of process of “flags of convenience” whereby in a bid to reduce costs, operators dissociate themselves from the obligations that determine the “responsible states” in their national legislations and go to other states that impose fewer restrictions when carrying out space operations. Moving facilities from one state to another would not be a very complex process following the model of the now defunct XCOR Aerospace that offered suborbital flights, whose space-plane Lynx was not launched vertically from a launch pad but was a rocket-powered plane designed like any commercial aircraft to be launched from a runway. The result of all this is that the issue of space debris, along with space weapons, is today one of the main problems facing space security. Moreover, space debris is “consi-dered by many observers to be the most pressing issue of space security.”126 The progres-sive deterioration of orbital resources is clearly a matter of maximum concern for public and private actors who have invested enormous efforts in achieving SSA capabilities to prevent and avoid collisions generating clouds of space debris. Although NASA has 125 The Economist, “Nanosats are go!” The Economist, 7 June 2014, <https://www.economist.com/ technology-quarterly/2014/06/07/nanosats-are-go> consulted: 15-9-2018. 126 Listner, M., “Legal issues surrounding space debris remediation”, The Space Review, 6 August 2012, <http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2130/1> consulted: 15-9-2018. Revista del Instituto Español de Estudios Estratégicos n.º 12 - Año: 2018 - Págs.: 397 a 431
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