Non-state actors and space security

Human presence in outer space is closely related to national and international security – space applications have become tools of choice for many kinds of tasks performed by militaries since the early sixties of XXth century. Military use of space is therefore something obvious and common, but nonmilitary activities affect international and national security as well. To address all the problems associated with that a special term has been coined, «space security». It refers, generally speaking, to all the security issues related to outer space. Current phase of advance of the space exploration and exploitation may be characterized, among others, by ongoing proliferation of related technologies. This refers to spreading of capabilities among growing circle of nations, but also to non-state actors of international relations. Thus, the latter have already attained capabilities to adversely affect orbital systems and they will they are grow rapidly in coming decades. Therefore space security, narrowly understood as safety of space-borne man-made objects and their capability to operate uninterrupted is increasingly jeopardized. This paper refers to one of the specific issues related to space security, which is a role of non-state actors within this area. Therefore, we intend to study the impact that such actors have upon space security related issues – it is going to be the main goal of this article. To achieve this the paper depicts an analytical framework regarding understanding of terms «space security» and «non-state actor», describes the activities of nonstate actors that may result in increasing threats to space security and assesses the relation between space security and non-state actors, drawing some general observations related to international security as a whole