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Paper short abstract

LEO mega-constellations entangle geopolitical futures with the expansion of satellite broadband infrastructures. Spatial imaginaries materialise through processes of refiguration, mobilising investment and security claims while intensifying Earth–orbit spatial conflicts across scales.

Paper long abstract

The rapid build-up of LEO mega-constellations has turned outer space into a key arena of geopolitical competition and economic expansion. This paper examines how geopolitical futures are assembled through the co-production of material infrastructures and spatial imaginaries. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the project “Outer Space” within the CRC 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces”, satellites, ground stations, control rooms, launch infrastructures, and spectrum regimes are analysed as techno-political arrangements that refigure the future of digital communication by reorganising access, connectivity, and control across Earth–orbit relations.

Empirically, the paper traces two mutually reinforcing dynamics. First, it reconstructs how terrestrial operational sites (such as control rooms, ground-segment architectures, and coordination bodies) stabilise the promise of “planetary” reach, while embedding it in situated regimes of access, interoperability, accountability, and security. Second, it analyses how spatial imaginaries are articulated and stabilised through the NewSpace discourse: future-oriented narratives of innovation, commercial inevitability, and strategic autonomy align investors, regulators, and security actors by translating contested geopolitical ambitions into seemingly self-evident trajectories of expansion.

This coupling of imaginaries and sociotechnical systems refigures Earth–orbit relations by producing new spatial orders and frictions across multiple scales: from competitive political economies of financing, procurement, and vertically integrated platform strategies to transnational regimes of spectrum coordination and orbital governance. By tracing these conflicts, the paper contributes to STS and the sociology of space by specifying how infrastructural arrangements consolidate particular spatial imaginaries and redistribute digital capacities for observation, control, and access in and through outer space.