Rapidly evolving technology and space debris reported in several places around the world—including pieces of a Chinese Long March 5B Rocket in the Indian Ocean—signal the need for a new era for regulation of space, Flinders University experts say.

Their timely new report is calling on governments to pay more attention to the use of low-Earth orbit as space laws and technologies race ahead at high speed.

Ahead of a meeting of intergovernmental experts at next year's World Radio Conference, the space experts from the Flinders University's Jeff Bleich Centre are raising concerns on several fronts, commencing with the takeoff of commercial interest in satellite "mega-constellations" in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).

"While there are laws that cover space activities, they are already under stress because of the speed at which the commercial space industry is evolving," says research associate in space law Joel Lisk, from the Jeff Bleich Centre at Flinders University's College of Business, Government and Law.

"There is a need to work towards ensuring that we have broad and flexible regulatory settings that are geared to rapid change and future developments.

Although this pure gold pin is not much bigger than the tip of a pencil, it is the "pulsing heart" of ESA's Low Earth Orbit Facility, LEOX. Part of the Agency's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory, based at ESA's ESTEC technical center in the Netherlands, this test facility is vital for developing materials capable of withstanding the highly-erosive individual oxygen atoms prevailing at the top of the atmosphere, the result of standard oxygen molecules of the same kind found just above the ground being broken apart by powerful ultraviolet radiation from the sun.