Presentation short abstract

Collecting makes the distant material: From vipers to meteorites, this presentation explores how humans make nature and space tangible through collecting and how this forms moral economies that define ownership, legitimacy, and value, foreshadowing the future of ownership and trade in space.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation explores how humans materialise ideas of nature and space through acts of collecting, arranging, and contextualising objects. Drawing on ethnographic research, it traces how meteorites, acting as tangible links between Earth and the cosmos, circulate through collections that transform fragments of space into objects of value, possession, and imagination.

My earlier research on the Bitis viper trade between Africa and Europe examined how participants navigate legality, risk, and care within overlapping moral economies, understood here as the informal morals and attitudes held by trade participants that shape a trade’s norms and operations (Gregson & Crang, 2017). Building on this work, I extend my research on the materialisation and ownership of nature to the materialisation and ownership of space through the meteorite trade. Drawing on auction catalogues and object biographies of individual meteorites, I explore how actors negotiate authenticity, legality, and moral value when “space” itself becomes ownable.

In the Bitis trade, bio-active terrariums replicate fragments of tropical ecosystems, materialising biophilia, the human drive to connect with life. Similarly, the display and exchange of meteorites evoke astrophilia, a fascination that extends this impulse beyond Earth’s boundaries. This dynamic is also reflected in how wildlife and meteorites are occasionally framed in terms of cultural heritage – formally through regulation or informally through collecting practices – even though they are not human-made. Situating these practices within moral economies shaped by desire, my presentation considers how this foreshadows challenges with space industries as they expand into new forms of ownership and trade.

Presentation short abstract

By December 2025, there were approx. 284 successful annual rocket launches. This democratizes space industrialization yet poses serious ecological and atmospheric concerns. We explore the challenging frontiers of NewSpace to life on Earth, at the nexus of bioethics and the emergent techno-verse.

Presentation long abstract

A recent gathering of the International Astronautical Society, enthusiasticly discussed doubling current global launch schedules. In 2023, orbital launch attempts reached a record high of 223; more than 2,800 satellites were deployed into orbit. By December 2025, there were approximately 284 successful annual rocket launches. This democratizes our dynamic space industrialization. Yet, nothing was mentioned of increasing environmental concerns the space launch industry is posing for the upper atmosphere and ozone layers. We are aware of challenges of lingering black carbon soot, and chemical pollutants from re-entry vehicle combustion. No regulatory regime is or has been proposed. A few companies are taking this atmospheric threat from our burgeoning space industry seriously and meeting the challenge. One such company is AIRCO, literally AIR COMPANY. Deeply invested in Carbon Capture materials creation, they are developing sustainable rocket fuels from CO2, sequestered from the air mixed with green hydrogen – possibly even on Mars. A multi-award-winning company, they have contracts with Virgin Atlantic, NASA and others. SKYRORA, a Scottish based company operating across Europe, designs, manufactures and deploys rockets to insure smaller satellite manufacturers space access. They have developed technology to transform unrecyclable plastics into sustainable rocket fuels; invest in local schools and communities. Yet, what of the atmospheric pollutants from reentry vehicles?; the increasing saturation of night skies with satellite trails?; and ecological impacts to Earth from burgeoning space port dynamics? We explore the challenging frontiers of NewSpace to life on Earth, at the nexus of bioethics and the emergent techno-verse.

Presentation short abstract

Reflecting on ethnographic fieldwork in Scottish and Scandinavian spaceports, the paper proposes an astro-political ecology to explain the causal connections between the environmental impacts of human activities in space with libertarian economics and anarcho-capitalist modes of governance.

Presentation long abstract

New Space (or NewSpace) describes the broad range of primarily US and European entrepreneurs and industry advocates leveraging rapidly falling costs in computing and materials to enable less established corporations (or ‘start-ups’) to successfully design and build space vehicles and habitats independently of NASA. Reflecting on Europe's emerging spaceports in the Scottish Highlands and Islands and northern Scandinavia, the paper proposes an astro-political ecology to explain the causal connections between the environmental impacts of human activities in space with libertarian ideologies and anarcho-capitalist governance.

Presentation short abstract

As private actors push the frontiers of space technology, the pace of innovation is outstripping existing governance frameworks, making it clear that robust, enforceable oversight is essential to ensure that this new era of space activity is safe, sustainable, and equitable.

Presentation long abstract

Humanity is entering a new era in which space is no longer a distant frontier. The rapid rise of commercial launch providers, reusable rockets and large satellite constellations has transformed space activity from a slow, state-led endeavor into a high-frequency industrial sector. But “There is no free l(a)unch!”, while this shift carries immense scientific promise, it also produces impacts that we are only beginning to understand.

On the ground, expanding launch corridors and testing zones have altered coastal wetlands, disturbed wildlife habitats and introduced new pathways for chemical contamination. Communities may face unpredictable risks from satellite debris that survives re-entry and falls from the sky. In orbit, the multiplication of satellites particularly from mega-constellations (ex: Starlink) have changed the night sky, creating persistent interference with astronomical research. This also poses concerns about orbital crowding, collision cascades and the long-term safety of low-Earth orbit.

A critical challenge soon will be ensuring compliance from private agencies whose satellite constellations and launch capacities may expand rapidly. Existing international frameworks, including those developed by UNOOSA, remain normatively valuable but provide limited practical tools for monitoring environmental impacts or enforcing accountability among commercial operators.

This gap highlights the need for coordinated international oversight of space activities’ impacts. Strengthened review boards, clear technical standards, and equitable governance guidelines could safeguard ecosystems and prevent global inequalities as space activity intensifies. To ensure compliance, states might link licensing, frequency allocation, or ground-station access to adherence to environmental and safety standards, creating strong incentives for responsible behavior among operators.

Presentation short abstract

We propose a new “Earth-space” framework for professional astronomers to address mega-constellation satellites and their impacts. Looking historically to frontier language, we confront NewSpace as a colonial project and ask astronomers to reflect on their role within it.

Presentation long abstract

The rapid increase in the number of space objects due to mega-constellation satellites like Starlink has led to several environmental issues in space, including light pollution, atmospheric contamination, space debris, and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Mega-constellations also have severe impacts on professional astronomy, leaving streaks in optical data and causing radio-frequency interference. The professional astronomy community has largely focused on technology-based solutions and voluntary agreements in the hopes of mitigation, paralleling climate change geoengineering proposals. NewSpace draws on frontier narratives of terra nullius to perpetuate extractive colonial practices, repackaging historical ideologies of conquest, masculinity, and exploitation as heroic progress. The same rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and land “emptiness” from New World “discovery” authorizes destructive NewSpace ambitions—militarization, environmental degradation, and cultural erasure. NewSpace deems space “okay to colonize,” as “there are no people up there”—an oversimplification ignorant of Indigenous understandings of an Earth-space continuum. Perceiving celestial bodies as “dead rocks,” NewSpace and professional astronomy alike feed terrestrial injustices—like the TMT development on Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea—that favor extractability over sovereignty. Ultimately, ethical human space activity requires rejecting violent expansion narratives, and recognizing space as an environment of complex ecosystems worthy of care and respect. We propose that effective, equitable solutions require professional astronomers to cease collaboration with NewSpace companies and instead work with and learn from communities already organizing against NewSpace environmental impacts. Professional astronomy has long benefited from colonialism—now is an opportunity to reflect on our role in perpetuating these harms, using an “Earth-space” framework to begin space’s decolonization.