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Space technology and services represent a major component of the well-functioning societies’ infrastructure. At the same time, outer space is being increasingly accessed with many entities sending out technologies in an attempt to minimize launching and operational costs. Subsequently, a cross-domains activity, space technologies and services lay in the insufficiently settled area of legislative and institutional measures, leading to a growing ambiguity among professional community, reunited under the concept of ”space traffic management” (STM). In line with the new initiatives in the field of STM, this paper attempts to unblackbox the interplay between definitions and establishment history of it, its context of emergence, usage and the level of technological maturation. At the same time, the paper intends to address the tension between governmental and private initiatives related to the management and the coordination for space traffic, in order to open up a discussion on this topic. Thus the paper is expected to contribute to building a better understanding of the controversial nature of space services and technologies, especially with regard to delineations among geopolitical groups of interest, economic and governmental uses, as well as interfacing, roles and responsibilities, and impact on interoperable means of communication among various institutions.

Space systems have become a key enabler for a wide variety of applications that are vital to the functioning of advanced societies. The trend is one of quantitative and qualitative increase of this dependence, so much so that space systems have been described as a new example of critical infrastructure. This article argues that the existence of critical space infrastructures implies the emergence of a new category of disasters related to disruption risks. We inventory those risks and make policy recommendations for what is, ultimately, a resilience governance issue.

Critical infrastructure is foundational for the prosperity and quality of life in any society. By definition, its destruction or disruption would cause severe damage and possibly loss of life. Within this understanding, space systems are a new category of critical infrastructure, emerging as an enabler of new applications which are critical within the wider system-of-systems. This paper presents the results of a modeling exercise validating the proof of concept regarding the idea of the global, air-transport-critical infrastructure’s dependence on space systems. By using an open-source application, the authors constructed a complex system made up of 18 airports for which six scenarios were modeled that represent either the exposure to specific space phenomena or the effects of a partial or total critical space infrastructure disruption. Despite the limitations and assumptions made in the building of this model, its results suggest that a significant impact would result from disruptive events, with the potential for cascading disruptions within the system, beyond the system under analysis, and into the wider system-of-systems. Tools such as this model are useful to policy- and decision-makers, not only to protect existing, critical infrastructures, but also to adequately source future risks, vulnerabilities, and threats, and design and build new infrastructures.

Given the newest trends in business and the growing interest towards Internet of Things, it became natural that economic environment switched the paradigm of classical business model. Blockchain technology is a very timely topic of discussion both in academic environment and outside it. This element was proven by authors when analyzing the topic towards the number of publication releases and the search engine queries. Furthermore, the authors shaped the framework of blockchains‘ development highlighting the main advantages and disadvantages for Industry 4.0.