The Modern Space Race: A Bright Frontier Or A Fragmented Arms Race : An analysis on the modern space race, its challenges and Issues and Influence from Political Tensions

Sammanfattning

This bachelor thesis examines how international cooperation and global security dynamics shape the modern day space race. Space is a new frontier that increasingly becomes strategically important for states, especially areas and sectors that target cooperation, alliances and security threats have once again resurfaced. The use of securitization theory as a theoretical framework, this study aims to analyze and understand how space related activities are framed and how and why securitization matters. The five sectors that will be explored in this study is the military, political, economic, societal and environmental one. This study is based on a qualitative text analysis that analyses major space actors and their goals like NASA, ESA, CNCA and other secondary international sources like news agencies. The empirical material gathered in this study focuses on major space cooperations and agreements between states and nations, including the International Space Station (ISS), International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), and the Artemis accords alongside NASA, but also recent and relevant conflicts and incidents like the Ukraine war, satellite interference and growing tensions between the United States, Russia and China. What the study found was what space is increasingly securitized across more than one sector. This securitization of space has led to strategic alliances and cooperation, the isolation of political blocs and the evergrowing gold rush to capture and seize valuable resources and assert technological domination in space. While the study does not rule out cooperation and mutual understandings when it comes to areas of shared interests and safety, like in orbital safety or mutual benefits, the geopolitical tensions of the world proves a certain untrust and unrest between states and alliances' ability to trust each other and collaborate further. The conclusion of this study states that securitization theory provides a useful framework for understanding the dichotomies and relationships between partners and adversaries in the modern space race and comes to the conclusion of a likelihood of a more fragmented and competitive securitized space order in the foreseeable future.