This is an international appeal to ask for an urgent world governance about space.

--------------

The starry sky we admire since our childhood is getting extinct. After the Amazon rainforest, the Arctic pack ice and biodiversity, this nocturnal vault is also on the verge of disappearing. If we do not act quickly, in less than 10 years, the sky we know will have faded behind the veil of our ambitions. It might be the one we want but maybe not. So, let’s have a global space governance.

According to the UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists) database, the number of satellites launched into space has been on an exponential curve for thirty years (you know, the same as for Covid-19). With 1.2 times more satellites put into orbit each year, we have gone from 1 satellite launched in 1988 to more than 300 satellites in 2018 for a total of several thousand satellites already above us. If we keep the same pace, we will launch 10,000 satellites per year by 2040 and more than 2,000,000 annually in the next 50 years.

The American private company SpaceX has already put 420 Starlink satellites in the sky in less than one year and plans to constellate the whole sky with about 42,000 satellites by a few years. The English OneWeb, the Canadian Telesat, the American Amazon, Lynk and Facebook, the Russian Roscosmos and the Chinese Aerospace Science and Industry Corp, have similar plans. A Russian start-up, called StartRocket, is even considering billboards seen from Earth made of a constellation of mini-satellites. To these potential satellites, we must also add those of the many other uses of space: meteorology, military, geolocation, etc. 

Astronomers are extremely concerned by the possibility that Earth may be blanketed by tens of thousands of satellites, which will greatly outnumber the 9,000 stars that are visible to the unaided human eye. If the launches continue, the tiny glow of the most luminous will “dazzle” us enough to hide the stars behind (and not only on visible frequencies, but also on other frequencies highly important for astronomers).

Thus, together with other telecommunication space projects soon, the normality will be a sky crowded with artificial objects (every one square degree of the sky will have a satellite crawling in it along the whole observing night). According to the astrophysicist Ethan Siegel in a Forbes Article, within less than ten years, looking at the sky would reveal more satellites than stars.

--------------

Space exploration is weakly regulated and even less controlled. In 1959, however, a “Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space” was created within the United Nations. It made several resolutions to be adopted by the General Assembly, resolutions which became even more concrete in 1967 with the “Outer Space Treaty”. At a time when the United States and the USSR were competing for the exploration of space and the Moon, this treaty set the first legal milestones. In particular, it mentioned the idea that space exploration “should be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries”. Since then, other international agreements, conventions and declarations have been signed and ratified by several countries.

However, all of these texts were swept away by a law adopted unilaterally by the United States on November 25, 2015, the Space Act, which authorizes the privatization of space. If some national laws, such as the French law, remain relatively restrictive, the leash of the human ambition of space exploration seems to have been let loose that day.

--------------

Today, some of us are ecstatic! But won’t we all cry tomorrow?

On the program:

• the whole humanity deprived of its immutable night sky, anywhere on Earth, even on the slopes of Nanga Parbat, on the dunes of the Kalahari, or on a raft in the middle of the Pacific ocean
• an extremely fertile science (that of Galileo, Newton or Einstein), the same one that allowed the launch of these satellites, suddenly discarded; tens of thousands of professional astronomers becoming idle, and observatories converted into museums
• an impact to be evaluated on the fauna due to the disappearance of dark nights (especially in the case of space ads)
• a collective imagination and literature challenged: how will we explain to our children "The Little Prince" by Saint-Exupéry?
• billions of spatial debris to come (they would be already 128 millions smaller than 1cm), and thousands of satellite disintegrating themselves annually in the lower atmosphere with all related issues (most of them are burning, some fall in the spacecraft cemetery in the Indian ocean, but others are uncontrolled)
• a space exploration paradoxically at a standstill since it would soon be too dangerous to cross the new satellites and debris belt

--------------

This question is the one of our “global commons”, the same as for our forests, our oceans or Antarctica. Elinor Ostrom, winner of Nobel Prize in economics, and other researchers showed us that managing them was a challenge we could meet if we tackled it together.

If the cessation of all these technological exploits is probably not systematically advisable, more discussion at the international level and the foundation of global governance on the subject seem essential. How can we imagine that the desire of a few people is entering without authorization the privacy of 8 billion human beings?

When facing an exponential activity, we must act now! Unless we hope a Kessler syndrome predicting self-destruction of satellites by their growing collisions, an American moratorium on the Starlink project is urgent and a longer-term collective reflection is imperative.

--------------

For all these reasons, we, subscribing to this appeal, ask governments, institutions and agencies all around the world:

1. for the right to admire and study our inherited night sky, whoever we are, wherever we are
   

2. for a worldwide orchestration about outer space use, that puts in place a clear impact evaluation of satellite launches (light pollution, astronomical consequences, social interest, debris, etc.), and that regulates the number of satellite fleets to the “strictly necessary number” and puts them in orbit only when outdated technology satellites are deorbited
3. to put on hold further Starlink launches (and other projects) and carry out an accurate moratorium on all space technologies that are not validated by a worldwide orchestration

(This petition is much inspired by another petition made by astronomers but only for astronomers and by this article on Medium).