Expanding use of space is an opportunity for sustainability but a threat to resilience

Green and digital transition policies that increasingly rely on satellites and the utilization of the near-Earth space contain an overlooked contradiction between sustainability and resilience: although satellite services increase sustainability on Earth by accelerating green and digital transition, the use of space renders the green and digital infrastructures vulnerable to space weather events. We show that an extreme near-Earth space event may significantly disturb the global sustainability transition. The resilience of green and digital infrastructures on Earth is threatened because of their tight operational coupling with satellite technologies and the contingencies of near-Earth space dynamics. To safeguard the emerging infrastructures with sufficient prediction capabilities, we recommend measures to enhance sociotechnical resilience and new space physics missions to improve our understanding of critical near-Earth space dynamics.

This abstract presents the article that the authors published in Ecology and Society (https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-16056-300206). This is a paper that considers how the field of space physics is aligned and contributes to the terrestrial sustainability, and gives a new and wider definition for the sustainable use of space, which is in line with the decades of discourse in social sciences.