Cybersecurity in New Space and the Problem of International Regulation

The cruciality of New Space technologies for sustainable development has made them perfect targets of hostile cyber operations. However, even though cybersecurity appears in many socioeconomic and political think tanks, lawmakers have paid little attention to cybersecurity for New Space systems. In particular, no adequate international rules exist on this global urgent challenge. In this realm, some new initiatives have been recently adopted at the domestic level. Significant examples of these provisions are the standards designed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the US Space Force. This paper will claim that these initiatives offer an important contribution to the drafting of new transnational regulation on the topic at hand and constitute a crucial feature of the evolving New Space legal governance, characterized by bottom-up actions; however, global transnational standards would be desirable to address global challenges, like cybersecurity.