Vatican’s Head Of Observatory Sees Church As Arbiter To Prevent Wild West In Space

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From i News:

The crowd cheers the successful SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018 (Photo: Joe Burbank /Orlando Sentinel via APFifty years after the moon landings, a new space race is underway – and the Vatican wants to act as moderator. Donald Trump has called for a new Space Force military division “to ensure American dominance”; private enterprises are littering the skies with thousands of satellites and vying for asteroid mining opportunities; 90 countries now have space programmes.

Amid the haste to embrace space tourism, militarisation and commercial exploitation, some see the need to create a common rulebook to avoid the final frontier becoming a new Wild West. In the medieval village of Castel Gandolfo, 25km from Rome, Brother Guy Consolmagno, the head of the Vatican Observatory, is among those advocating for more regulation to reduce the likelyhood of future conflict.