7 incidents on the record
Treaties and policy milestones
The Outer Space Treaty, UNISPACE, COPUOS, the moratoria proposed and rejected: the legal scaffolding of space activity is built one stalled negotiation at a time. The entries here mark the moments when policy moved, or pointedly didn't.
Incidents
- Planet Labs pulls Iran imagery at US request — USA · Iran · global, Apr 2026. In April 2026 Planet Labs confirms it is indefinitely withholding satellite imagery of the Iran war from commercial customers at the US government's request. Maxar and others quietly follow. The Gaza precedent has now been formalised across an entire region.
- Space-based nuclear ASAT, declassified — USA · UK · Russia, Feb 2024. Washington and London declassify intelligence indicating Russian development of a space-based nuclear ASAT capability. The treaty regime built in 1967 to prevent precisely this is, on paper, still in force.
- Starlink, switched off — Ukraine · USA, Sept 2022. Elon Musk personally disabled Starlink coverage over Crimea to abort a Ukrainian drone strike on the Russian Black Sea Fleet. A war was shaped by a single CEO's decision over a private network.
- Brexit and Galileo PRS — United Kingdom · EU, Jun 2016. The Brexit referendum ignites a quiet dispute over the UK's role in Galileo's encrypted Public Regulated Service. Westminster has paid in by the hundreds of millions; Brussels begins drafting the lockout.
- BeiDou regional service — China, Jan 2004. China activates BeiDou-1's regional service. The technical justification is operational; the policy justification, repeated openly in Beijing, is that GPS is operated by an adversary that may switch the lights off.
- UNISPACE-82 stalemate — United Nations, Aug 1982. Vienna's second UN space conference fails to produce a binding agreement on the non-weaponisation of space. The US and USSR both refuse to give up the option. The stalemate sets the tone for forty years.
- Carter's ASAT moratorium — USA, Mar 1977. President Carter unilaterally pauses American ASAT development, hoping to bring the Soviets back to arms-control talks. The talks collapse; the moratorium quietly expires and the work resumes.