United States Space Priorities Framework
Original Document (PDF)
Space activities are essential to our way of life. They advance our understanding of the Earth, the universe, and humanity; enable U.S. national security; create good jobs and economic opportunity; enhance our health and well-being; and inspire us to pursue our dreams. Space capabilities provide critical data, products, and services that drive innovation in the United States and around the world. Access to and use of space is a vital national interest.
We are in a historic moment: space activities are rapidly accelerating, resulting in new opportunities in multiple sectors of society, as well as new challenges to U.S. space leadership, global space governance, the sustainability of the space environment, and safe and secure space operations. Burgeoning U.S. space activities are a source of American strength at home and abroad – from providing tangible economic and societal benefits to Americans to expanding our network of alliances and partnerships. The United States will bolster the health and vitality of our space sectors – civil, commercial, and national security – for the benefit of the American people and leverage that strength to lead the international community in preserving the benefits of space for future generations.
U.S. Benefits from Space Activities
Space as a Source of American Innovation and Opportunity
Space data, products, and services provide tangible benefits and economic opportunity to the American people. Space exploration and discovery engages and inspires the next generation of Americans.
Space activities power our economy and our way of life. Data, products, and services from space enable American businesses and create American jobs in sectors as varied as manufacturing, transportation, logistics, agriculture, finance, and communications. We rely upon satellites to improve our lives and our communities, such as by enabling global navigation; assisting with crop yield prediction, water management, and power grid monitoring; and facilitating global telecommunications for applications ranging from banking to education to telemedicine.
Developing space technologies spurs innovation. American companies lead the world in pushing the frontier of space technologies and space applications. New space goods and services create new industries and jobs, such as in clean energy technology and broadband access, providing increased opportunities for equitable economic growth and development in historically underserved or disadvantaged communities. Furthermore, space activities fuel cutting-edge research and technology development, yielding new discoveries that improve the quality of life for people on Earth.
Space capabilities help us manage our resources; protect people, property, and the environment from extreme weather events; and address the climate crisis. Satellites collect information to monitor our changing planet and to protect our lands, oceans, and atmosphere. Data collected from space helps us improve national preparedness and reduce the impacts of extreme weather, natural disasters, and climate change in a manner that better addresses the needs of vulnerable communities.
Space inspires us. Space exploration and scientific discovery attracts people from across America and around the world to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Bold and ambitious space missions demonstrate that our best years are ahead of us and that we are innovators and creators.
Space as a Source of American Leadership and Strength
The United States is the world leader in space. A robust space program enables us to expand our alliances and partnerships and underpins our military strength.
Space achievements demonstrate American leadership. U.S. human and robotic accomplishments in space unlock the mysteries of the universe and provide tangible measures of American technological capacity and our national ability to execute large-scale, complex projects. Our successes in space bolster our credibility and influence worldwide.
Space activities broaden and deepen our international partnerships. Our global network of alliances and partnerships is a strategic advantage of the United States. Worldwide interest in space offers the United States opportunities to expand this network while opening new avenues for U.S. leadership and collaboration with allies and partners.
Space underpins our national security and ability to respond decisively to crises around the world. Information collected from space informs national decision makers about evolving threats to U.S., allied, and partner interests. Space capabilities enable the U.S. military to protect and defend the U.S. homeland and to advance the national and collective security interests of the United States and its allies and partners. Space also enables the United States to respond to humanitarian crises more quickly and effectively.
U.S. Space Policy Priorities
Maintaining a Robust and Responsible U.S. Space Enterprise
Reaping the current and future benefits of space requires that the United States maintain a vibrant space enterprise across the civil, commercial, and national security sectors.
The United States will maintain its leadership in space exploration and space science. The United States will remain a global leader in science and engineering by pioneering space research and technology that propels exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. U.S. human and robotic space exploration missions will land the first woman and person of color on the Moon, advance a robust cislunar ecosystem, continue to leverage human presence in low-Earth orbit to enable people to live and work safely in space, and prepare for future missions to Mars and beyond. Scientific missions will investigate the origins of our universe and enhance understanding of the Earth, the Sun, and our solar system. The United States will continue to conduct these missions in a manner that furthers decades-long cooperation with established spacefaring nations and engages emerging spacefaring nations in new partnerships. Additionally, the United States will continue to leverage civil space activities to foster new commercial space services such as human space transportation and space stations in low Earth orbit.
The United States will advance the development and use of space-based Earth observation capabilities that support action on climate change. The United States, through collaboration between the public, private, and philanthropic sectors, will accelerate the development and use of Earth observation to support climate change mitigation and adaptation. Open dissemination of Earth observation data will support both domestic and international efforts to address the climate crisis.
The United States will foster a policy and regulatory environment that enables a competitive and burgeoning U.S. commercial space sector. U.S. commercial space activities are on the cutting edge of space technology, space applications, and space-enabled services. To facilitate the growth of U.S. industry and support the creation of American jobs, the United States will clarify government and private sector roles and responsibilities and support a timely and responsive regulatory environment. U.S. regulations must provide clarity and certainty for the authorization and continuing supervision of non-governmental space activities, including for novel activities such as on-orbit servicing, orbital debris removal, space-based manufacturing, commercial human spaceflight, and recovery and use of space resources. To create free and fair market competition internationally, the United States will work with allies and partners to update and harmonize space policies, regulations, export controls, and other measures that govern commercial activities worldwide. Additionally, the United States will work with allies and partners to combat foreign government non-market practices, protect critical U.S. technologies and intellectual property, and reduce reliance on strategic competitors for key space capabilities. Such efforts will be informed by economic data and research to better understand the space economy and will reflect the importance of the responsible and sustainable use of space.
The United States will protect space-related critical infrastructure and strengthen the security of the U.S. space industrial base. Space systems are an essential component of U.S. critical infrastructure – by directly providing important services and by enabling other critical infrastructure sectors and industries. The United States will enhance the security and resilience of space systems that provide or support U.S. critical infrastructure from malicious activities and natural hazards. In particular, the United States will work with the commercial space industry and other non-governmental space developers and operators to improve the cybersecurity of space systems, ensure efficient spectrum access, and strengthen the resilience of supply chains across the nation’s space industrial base. Furthermore, the United States will enhance the protection of terrestrial critical infrastructure from space weather events, which can disrupt services such as electric power, telecommunications, water supply, health care, and transportation.
The United States will defend its national security interests from the growing scope and scale of space and counterspace threats. Intensifying strategic competition presents a serious threat to U.S. national security interests, including in space. The military doctrines of competitor nations identify space as critical to modern warfare and view the use of counterspace capabilities as a means both to reduce U.S. military effectiveness and to win future wars. Confrontation or conflict, however, is not inevitable. To deter aggression against U.S., allied, and partner interests in a manner that contributes to strategic stability, the United States will accelerate its transition to a more resilient national security space posture and strengthen its ability to detect and attribute hostile acts in space. The United States also will take steps to protect its military forces from space-enabled threats. As part of bolstering space mission assurance, the United States will leverage new commercial space capabilities and services to meet national security requirements and will deepen the integration of U.S. national security space capabilities and activities with those of our allies and partners. The United States also will engage diplomatically with strategic competitors in order to enhance stability in outer space. Finally, U.S. national security space operations will continue to comply with applicable international law and demonstrate leadership in both the responsible use of space and stewardship of the space environment.
The United States will invest in the next generation. Investing in STEM education is critical to continuing U.S. leadership into the next generation and preparing the nation’s STEM workforce to fuel the economy of the future. Our STEM ecosystem of public and private organizations will leverage space programs to educate our children as part of improving the scientific literacy of Americans and increasing diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion in scientific and technological fields. The United States is a diverse and multicultural society, and its space activities and workforce must reflect this composition. Furthermore, space information will continue to be made more accessible, providing inspiration and access to the benefits of space to more people than ever before. This includes working with commercial space entities to leverage the growing space economy to support historically underserved and underrepresented communities so that the benefits of space can accrue to all Americans.
Preserving Space for Current and Future Generations
As space activities evolve, the norms, rules, and principles that guide outer space activities also must evolve. The United States will lead in the responsible, peaceful, and sustainable exploration and use of outer space.
The United States will lead in strengthening global governance of space activities. The United States will engage the international community to uphold and strengthen a rules-based international order for space. The United States, working with commercial industry, allies, and partners, will promote the implementation of existing measures and lead in the development of new measures that contribute to the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of space activities. The United States will demonstrate how space activities can be conducted in a responsible, peaceful, and sustainable manner.
The United States will bolster space situational awareness sharing and space traffic coordination. The United States will continue to share space situational awareness information and provide basic spaceflight safety services to all space operators. These services will be transferred to an open data platform, hosted by a U.S. civil agency, that leverages data and services provided from a variety of government, commercial, academic, and international sources. Working with industry and international partners, the United States will lead in the development and implementation of open, transparent, and credible international standards, policies, and practices that establish the foundation for global space traffic coordination.
The United States will prioritize space sustainability and planetary protection. The United States will work with other nations to minimize the impact of space activities on the outer space environment, including avoiding harmful contamination of other planetary bodies. The United States will increase efforts to mitigate, track, and remediate space debris. The United States will advance development and implementation of domestic and international best practices to mitigate the creation of space debris and will support efforts to evolve those practices to ensure continued safety of flight operations in the future. The United States also will continue to protect the Earth’s biosphere by avoiding biological contamination by spacecraft returning to Earth. The United States will lead, in cooperation with commercial industry and international allies and partners, in efforts to enhance warning of and mitigation against potential near-Earth object impacts.
Conclusion
Space activities benefit humanity. They power the global economy; underpin U.S., allied, and partner national security; improve the daily lives of Americans and people around the world; and inspire us to pursue our dreams. We are on the cusp of historic changes in access to and use of space – changes that have the potential to bring the benefits of space to more people and communities than ever before. The United States will harness the use of space to tackle the most pressing challenges at home and abroad, while leading the international community in preserving the benefits of space for current and future generations.
More hand waving from the government about how space is great and all.. Six months from now, will anyone remember this document? Is there a point they are trying to make here, because I am not seeing it.
What the US most emphatically will NOT do (or at least desperately does not want to do) in future decades seems clear. The US will not establish a continuously manned lunar base. The US will not build colonies on Mars. The US will not send astronauts thto the asteroid belt or encourage mining of asteroids. The US will not seriously study schemes for sending people to the stars. The US WILL continue to brag about its space leadership.
That’s the point.
The folks who are actively working on that stuff say different. #we’regoing
Yeah, but the folks working it are not the final say whether those projects get to complete. After a long career in the space business, I have experienced getting burned by the powers that be at NASA and elsewhere enough so that I have developed a “prove it to me” attitude towards the government’s big space plans.
That being said, I sincerely and in all seriousness hope that your work comes to fruition.
When you say ‘the US’ – do you mean NASA? Or America? If its the latter, I’d suggest taking a look at commercial space as a logical leader, with NASA following in its wake. I’d argue the Moon, Mars, and Beyond are all possible mainly through commercial space, rather than NASA per se, though it is a partnership. But its really the commercial incentive to go that will drive next steps – not government policy or flags and footprints.
Is the U.S. puts more sanctions on Russia over Ukraine the primary impact will be on commerce. All aspects of US/Russia interactions will be affected.
It may be that we end up with US-Russia space cooperation suffering a fundamental break. Remember that up until ASTP, US and Soviet space efforts were entirely separate, and then it wasn’t until MIR-Shuttle that space cooperation really resumed. We’re clearly back in strategic competition with Russia, so it wouldn’t surprise me that Russia-US space cooperation suffers as a result. Russia is likely to move closer to China in space, particularly given the indicators inherent in the ILRS.
I thought it clear from the context that I was speaking of government institutions — NASA, Space Force, other space-involved agencies, and higher level organizations that control their actions, such as Congress and the White House.
As for the doings of “commercial space”, let’s be honest here. Building even a tiny lunar outpost, let alone starting a Martian colony, will require time — up to a decade or more — and tens of billions of dollars, with very problematical payoffs. No commercial entity right now is going to make such a speculative investment. Let’s note that even Mighty Elon Musk speaks of transporting settlers at some point to a Martian settlement in his Starships, not of building such a settlement with his own funds. These initial steps towards colonizing the heavens are going to require some amount of money, at a level which can only come from governments.
I’ll bite. This document lays out a FRAMEWORK for government work in space that describes their work as what is *should* be, that is to say it sets out appropriate boundaries for federal government involvement, including insuring the basic ability to get from A to B (orbital debris mitigation) and working on the things that have value but from which private entities may struggle to derive a profit (the climate crisis).
With said private entities (well, one, so far) making serious headway toward building systems to enable transportation to and beyond LEO, do we really want yet another government document that describes how government will be the one to do the Big Thing Of The Day? Isn’t it way past time for us to abandon the 1960s Space Race mentality?
As for cynicism, I let Oscar Wilde be my guide.
Apologies for the length of this post.
I’m sorry but I don’t see much of a framework here. The first two sections of the document is all about why space is wonderful. Don’t disagree with what it says but it is not really about priorities.
The fourth section is basically all the support activities the US will do to “preserve” space. Nothing wrong here either, but it is not relevant unless there is a thriving space program that needs all these support programs.
The third section has the meat of the US space policy priorities. There are 7 paragraphs and their topics are:
1. Yay, us.
2. Human and scientific exploration
3. Climate change
4. Creating regulations on space activities
5. Infrastucture and its protection
6. Military stuff
7. Education
Looking at the 2nd paragraph, here is summary of the all US priorities on the human exploration of space, contained in one half of one paragraph:
1. Pioneer R&T that propels exploration – nothing about what specific exploration we’ll be doing, just do some research and develop some tech
2. Land 1st woman & POC on the Moon – Nothing wrong with this per se, but it comes across to me as an end goal instead of a nice waypoint in our overall exploration plans
3. Advance a robust cislunar ecosystem – What the heck does this even mean?
4. Prepare for future missions to Mars and and beyond – “Prepare” is a priority? What about the actual missions?
So, again, hand waving In contrast, I would rather see something like this, taken from Constellation proposal documents concerning VSE:
“Constellation Goals and Objectives
In January 2004, President George W. Bush announced the new Vision for Space Exploration for NASA. The fundamental goal of this vision is to advance U.S. scientific, security and economic interests through a robust space exploration program. In support of this goal, the United States will:
– Implement a sustained and affordable human and robotic program to explore the solar system and beyond;
– Extend human presence across the solar system, starting with a human return to the Moon by the year 2020, in preparation for human exploration of Mars and other destinations;
– Develop the innovative technologies, knowledge, and infrastructures both to explore and to support decisions about future destinations for human exploration;”
Yes, it is still somewhat vague, but it is a lot more specific and closer to an actual framework than the wording of the above document. Look, my main complaint is not that what it says is bad necessarily, but that we have seen several of these “list all the great things we are already doing in space but let’s not commit to anything”, type documents over the years, but wind up having no practical effect that I can see.
I think Todd Austin and Mike Shupp have it about right. This document is hopeful that Mr.Musk and other commercial interests can do the things NASA has demonstrated its inability to do effectively. If NASA continues to get the budgetary support, then NASA can become a paying customer and buy tickets to send its personnel anyplace Mr. Musk can take them.
I question why NASA would get this role. USGS, NIH and other government agencies could probably be better suited to studying planetary geology, or human health and adaptation, or other sciences. NASA ought to get its traditional role in aerospace technological research, although that is so long in the past not too many remember that was how NASA and NACA started. Just because NASA supplied pilots and pilot astronauts, I dont think there is much rationale for NASA supplying all the geologists and medical doctors and biological researchers.
The words about space situational awareness are good, let’s see what action results. The Biden Administration has shown that it can get results.
One thing this document tries to say is that NASA will remain the central world organization for coordinating international participation. I think this is hopeful, on NASAs part. At one time, in the post Apollo and later in the Shuttle era, NASA was the logical leader. However since those decades, NASA has largely gotten out of the business of designing, building, and even a lot of aspects of operating manned spacecraft. Since the 1990s NASA has had to turn most of those functions over to other countries. Orion was largely developed by ESA. Even NASAs one time suppliers have not been so succesful. Orion, Boeings CST, and the SLS have taken amazingly long times and amazingly large amounts of money to complete. For some reason Space X has run circles around ‘old space’. I’d be surprised if we did not see more international leadership in the future.
The Orion crew modules were designed by Lockheed Martin. They are built by LMA at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility. It’s only the service modules which ESA is providing. So I wouldn’t say Orion is “largely” developed by ESA.
The ESA SM is 70% of the mass and most of the critical funcrionality of the CSM vehicle. Besides, how much of a refund did Lockheed Martin give to NASA when ESA signed on to provide most of the vehicle?