How could Outer Space help us reach the world’s ambitious targets, the UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030?
Listen to Space for the Earth by Ozric Tentacles, Time Is Running Out by Muse, and Final Countdown by Europe to best enjoy reading this page.
This page is in memory of Dr. Shivani Johri, who flew prematurely among the stars on May 7, 2021.
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere,” as per the dedicated UN website. They are a list of seventeen commitments that all the nations have subscribed to in 2015 to solve the significant problems of our world. They are not legally binding, of course, and the UN is relying on every single country to take ownership of the goals and implement them by 2030.
After nine years, the UN stated that the countries had made some progress but needed more to meet the agreed deadline. So, 2020 should have been the starting point for the Decade of Actions initiative to speed up the delivery of the global goals. However, something else has distracted the world.
First, the COVID-19 pandemic endangered the sustainability gains achieved until then, and the UN has urged to pursue a “transformative recovery” by the nations to address the impact, reduce the risks of other similar crises, and relaunch the SDG initiatives.
Then, the war in Ukraine in 2022 and the war in Palestine in 2023 took out the focus and the resources from the SDG country action plans (for example, the re-introduction of coal instead of natural gas, the longer maritime routes to avoid the Red Sea), reshaping the balance of world power.
Despite such dramatic changes, what could be one transformative element that supports the SDG roadmap despite the odds? Outer Space is the best candidate, of course! The potential it could unleash is so huge that, if exploited in the right way, it would be of great help in achieving those much-needed results.
The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, or UNOOSA, has already done an exercise to understand how space has been helping the achievement of the SDGs (Space4SDGs). However, those contributions could be more effective with an increased effort in space technology development.
In the following, we will dive into the SDGs, one by one, and suggest some of the contributions that space could bring to them in the short and the long term.
SDG 1 – No Poverty
Earth Observation technologies (presented already on the page Earth From Space) are helping forecast natural disasters to better coordinate aid provision, optimize the sustainable utilization of natural resources, and provide efficient support to vulnerable populations.
However, the main contribution could come from space resource mining. Even if not signed by the top space-capable countries, the UN Moon Treaty introduced a significant principle about space resources: they “are the common heritage of mankind.” In other words, all countries must benefit from the wealth generated by their exploitation.
The matter is not easy to handle since only the resources in the asteroid belt could be worth trillions of dollars. Consequently, they could generate critical issues in the world economy if not managed carefully. A possible solution is introducing a license with specific caps to the quantity of space-mined resources and a tax for the precious resources brought back to Earth. We could call it the Outer Space Tax.
Who or what should handle such an influential bureaucratic power? As the Moon Treaty indicates, it should be an “international regime,” possibly an expression of the United Nations themselves (why not directly the UNOOSA?). All the proceeds should then flow through the various UN programs and agencies, feeding these SDGs and related initiatives.
SDG 2 – Zero Hunger
Poverty and hunger are very often the sides of the same coin. Hence, all Earth Observation technologies supporting SDG 1 are already providing benefits even to this goal. They are strategic for optimizing crop productivity through increased efficiency in using existing resources and improving livestock management through enhanced monitoring and identification of suitable grazing.
The Space Tax, proposed above, could be used to support SDG 2, fueling programs to sustain developing countries. Nevertheless, there are other substantial contributions.
Several projects are running to understand how to produce crops with scarce resources available in space, such as light, nutrients, and water. From human-guided experiments aboard space stations to autonomous space farms, many experiments produced various crops, bringing space farming closer to usual activity in space.
In the future, farming stations in space could produce food for humans living in space and also for those living on Earth. The limit will be just their dimensions!
SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-being
It might sound repetitive; Earth Observation applications are critical tools also for this goal. They are used to identify the ecological, environmental, and other factors contributing to the spread of vector-borne diseases, monitor disease patterns, and define areas requiring disease-control planning.
Monitoring air quality and traffic from space provides insightful information to take action and mitigate conditions that could harm health and well-being.
Another fundamental element supporting this goal is microgravity. Our beloved twenty-year-old International Space Station is the perfect laboratory to run many life science experiments and studies, from new drug development to stem cell utilization to fight against cancer.
These studies cannot be run successfully on the Earth’s surface because gravity negatively impacts many chemical and physical processes, such as the artificial growth of crystals, just to mention one of the most known.
Recently, the private company Varda Space Industries synthesized the first crystal of a drug in a zero-g full automatic laboratory in LEO, the Winniebago-1. The process ran smoothly, and the drug reached the surface thanks to the hypersonic capsule developed by Varda, which entered into the atmosphere and gently delivered the precious cargo back.
In the future, we could treat specific diseases directly in space, building dedicated hospital stations to use micro-gravity conditions as a direct treatment. Can you imagine that? It could be enough to get into space for some time to get healthy again.
Even if it might seem so, this is NOT science fiction! For example, a promising study highlighted that cancer cells could suffer from the lack of gravity, which prevents them from joining together in cancer tissues. Discoveries like this could be impressive game-changers for the medicine of the future!
What else? Shortly, we could see autonomous driving enabled by GPS, which could significantly decrease the risk of car accidents. Or 3D-printed human organs produced in microgravity for transplants, like Redwire did in 2023. They successfully ran the BFF-Meniscus-2 experiment, bio-printing a human meniscus with 3D technology on the ISS, leveraging microgravity conditions.
The checkmate will then be to move heavy and polluting industries from the Earth to Outer Space, eliminating the root cause of many diseases.
SDG 4 – Quality Education
One of the issues of bringing education around the world is that many students are physically far away from the schools they would like to attend. High-speed internet could help them to take advantage of remote learning and e-learning solutions.
However, if a place is far from schools, it is often far from the internet infrastructure. What could fix this situation? Soon said: satellite internet constellations, like Starlink from SpaceX, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, and the Eutelsat Oneweb, are providing (or will provide) connectivity to anywhere in the world, bringing particular benefits to the remote communities, otherwise cut out.
Another element boosting this goal is access to the space environment for educational purposes. Just to cite one initiative amongst many, an ESA-funded project called Dream Coder 2.0 is providing a group of Italian students with the opportunity to develop and execute code on a platform installed on the International Space Station, allowing them to learn how to interact with the station itself and its main operative parameters.
Space development is an incredible flywheel for education since it generates an increasing number of STEM jobs to work on new technologies and make new scientific discoveries, requiring STEM students to fulfill the need. It will also boost studies in law and economics to establish new regulations, new business models, and supply chains. In addition, the space environment allows us to run experiments that could not be conducted on Earth, as already mentioned regarding SDG 3.
The conquest of outer space needs education as much as the education system needs outer space to improve!
SDG 5 – Gender Equality
First, the physical differences between men and women are irrelevant in space: astronauts can be male or female, and there are no gender requirements, including Extra Vehicular Activities (EVA). The first all-female EVA outside the ISS is already in the books: nobody noticed any difference, and the activities regularly started and ended as planned.
The NASA Artemis program aims to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by the end of 2026.
All STEM studies are not gender specific, even if they were generally considered a male domain. However, the high request for students in these fields increases the number of women involved. With the further growth required by space technology development, the effect should receive an additional boost.
UNOOSA has launched a specific initiative called Space4Women to speed up the already ongoing gender equalization in the space economy.
SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation
This goal regards water management in all forms, from sourcing to distributing, using, and purifying. The immediate contribution of space is again the information coming from Earth observation, enabling a better monitoring of water quality and availability, precise weather forecasting to prevent the effects of floods and droughts and much more.
However, water is considered the new oil in space: the price for a liter of water in space is around 20.000 $. It is then crucial to recycle water in space and develop all the technology that supports such activity.
Nowadays, more than 95% of water is recycled on the ISS, getting closer to full reusability. All the technologies developed for this purpose will also provide many benefits in recycling and purifying water on Earth, removing pollutants, and providing clean water to all.
A clear example is the work of the Melissa Foundation (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative), a European organization working on realizing completely circular life support systems. They demonstrated the technologies developed for space to treat the polluted underground water for a school in Morocco, allowing the local population access to fresh water.
For this goal, there is a dedicated UNOOSA portal named Space4Water. Its vision is to enable all stakeholders involved in the space and water communities to access data and knowledge and to realize the full potential of these two worlds combined.
SDG 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy
One of the most known space applications, the Global Positioning System, or GPS, is also a primary contributor to this goal. Thanks to its accurate timing, the GPS signal is a crucial element in the management of the so-called smart grids, which are the new electrical grids allowing the integration of renewable energy resources and energy efficiency resources in the global electrical grid.
Also, Earth Observation applications support this SDG, monitoring the critical infrastructures of the electrical grid, providing weather forecasts to predict the production of renewable energy sources, and so on.
Furthermore, the Sun radiates more than enough energy towards the Earth to meet global energy needs for an entire year. For this fact alone, space could support achieving this goal very effectively while being a game changer in power generation thanks to Space Solar Power (SPP) technology.
Generally, it consists of putting satellites full of solar panels into orbit to transform solar energy into electricity. A special antenna beams the generated power back to the Earth’s surface to supply a terrestrial grid.
If the concept seems easy to understand, its practical construction is rich in engineering problems. However, it is a technology that, with the right level of funding, could be developed in years, not centuries.
It is only a matter of solving technical issues. Japan, China, Russia, and the US are already working on several SPP projects. Before this decade is over, we could see prototypes of “power sats” over our heads, like the one by Caltech that in June 2023 demonstrated wireless energy transfer in space and to the ground for the first time.
Last but not least, we could exploit an element of the lunar surface, the Helium-3, that is one of the most valid candidates as fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors (as described in the article “A Moon of Opportunities”), which will most likely free humanity from any energy production issue.
SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
This goal links to SGD1 (Erase Poverty) and SDG2 (Zero Hunger), and space is a primary contributor, offering the same benefits it brings to the other two.
Furthermore, space is also directly influencing the growth of the global economy: the new space industry is ramping up year after year. Morgan Stanley expects it to hit US$ 1.1 trillion by 2040, while Bank of America estimates it will grow eight times bigger in the next thirty years, reaching US$ 2.7 trillion in 2045.
Such considerable growth will bring relevant contributions to the overall employment levels, requiring a proportional increase in new and qualified jobs.
Looking further in time, exploiting space resources instead of terrestrial ones will support our unstoppable economic expansion more sustainably for our planet. This concept is the basis of the Spacepolitan thought (see the Spacepolitans Manifesto).
SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
In recent decades, space has provided the ideal “infrastructure” for telecommunication and geopositioning services, a well-known benefit experienced by many of us in our daily activities. It is expanding further with the launch in LEO of the internet satellite constellations and the 5G cellular network extensions.
What about innovation? Space exploration means doing things never tried before, inventing solutions, and developing new technologies, so innovating at its best!
Is there a more powerful flywheel to accelerate innovation itself? It is hard to find one. However, high-energy and quantum physics can play similar roles even if their range of applications is not so wide.
Lastly, according to the Spacepolitans tenet (see again the Spacepolitans Manifesto), when heavy industries move into Outer Space, we will finally be able to host only truly sustainable activities on the planet, removing the primary source of pollution.
SDG 10 – Reduced Inequalities
This SDG aims to reduce inequality in income, age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, religion, and more. Satellite data can support, plan, and monitor the mobility and migration of people, especially between different areas of the world, and assist in improving refugees’ conditions, disaster planning, and emergency response.
Again, the connectivity services based on satellites could help reduce the so-called “digital divide” by bringing access to the internet and information everywhere, as mentioned in the SDG4 (Quality Education) paragraph.
Space could also introduce some risk, like a sort of “space divide.” since exploiting space requires great initial investments, leaving out the most disadvantaged countries. However, risks can often turn into opportunity
The UNOOSA initiative Access to Space for All supports countries to develop space technologies by facilitating satellite deployments and microgravity and exploration experiments. Kenya, the first country to participate, is now operating its first satellite in orbit. The first satellite for Mauritius, MIR-SAT1, was deployed in space in June 2021, and more countries followed and will follow.
Then, although it may seem repetitive if implemented in the right way, the “good old” Space Tax should indeed reduce inequalities, sharing benefits also with SDG1 (erase poverty), SDG2 (zero hunger), and SDG8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth).
SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities
GPS, 5G and IoT satellite communication, and Earth Observation technologies are crucial contributions that space can make towards achieving this goal and supporting the realization of the so-called smart cities. This new concept of urbanization leverages data connection between devices and vehicles and new ways to monitor air pollution or the state of infrastructures.
Space can even contribute to saving lives in our cities by providing precious information to support rescue in case of any type of disaster. It can even help to prevent them, especially one of the most uncommon to think about: the issue of potentially hazardous space objects, also known as the asteroid threat.
Did you ever hear of Chelyabinsk? It’s a Russian city that became newsworthy in 2013 after a small meteor of just twenty meters in diameter exploded over the city at an altitude of thirty kilometers, injuring more than one thousand people and damaging over seven thousand buildings.
How can space help to address this kind of event? Nowadays, there are a lot of initiatives aimed at mapping all Near Earth Objects, or NEOs, the most likely impactors. NASA received specific instructions from the American Congress to find and track them to predict such disgraceful impact events, establishing the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO).
National space agencies already sent many spacecraft to rendezvous with asteroids and better understand their nature (ex. NASA Dawn mission). JAXA Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 and NASA OSIRIS-Rex missions collected and brought asteroid samples back to Earth. The NASA DART mission tested a trajectory deflection strategy and technology, the kinetic impactor.
Investing in these space technologies could help us not to end up like the dinosaurs! Interesting, isn’t it? Further information on the subject is available on the page Asteroids: Cross And Delight.
SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production
The benefits already identified for SDG6 (Clean Water) and SDG7 (Affordable Energy also apply to this SDG since they are strongly related.
Another significant application of current space technologies is the so-called Smart Farming: satellite data are used in crop cultivation to cut or even avoid using pesticides while increasing land productivity. Then we have livestock grazing, images from space, and herd geolocalization, which are helping the new “space cowboys” improve the yield of their work, just managing the available resources better.
Regarding technology transfer, the In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technology could be used for terrestrial operations, allowing more efficient exploitation of available resources.
Need an example? Let’s take 3D printing construction capabilities. It would be too expensive to build the bases on the Moon, or even on Mars, using construction materials from the Earth.
A possible solution would be to send only construction tools out of the Terrestrial gravity well and use any resource available on site. NASA ran a competition for 3D-printed buildings, and many startup companies participated, proving that this technology was already feasible. The winner, AI Space Factory, demonstrated the construction of a 3D-printed habitat named Marsha, a future Martian habitat.
Furthermore, they developed a terrestrial habitat, Tera, built with the same technology, using a fraction of the resources commonly used in standard constructions. As we know, the construction industry is responsible for introducing a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, so the positive side effects of 3D-printing construction technologies can again benefit other SDGs (see also below).
Thinking about the distant future, as already said and restated for SDG8 and SDG9, if we don’t move population and production into outer space and continue to consume our resources at the current rate, we will completely exhaust our beloved planet with no chance to recover.
SDG 13 – Climate Action
What is climate change? To answer this question, we need to consider scientific data, like air and water temperature, sea level, ice and snow coverage, extreme weather conditions, CO2 levels, and many more, gathering them from the entire planet. The only way to do so is to send special satellites to orbit, as shared in the “Observing the Earth From Space” page.
Monitoring and analyzing these data year by year will be the key to describing various climate dynamics and unveiling their possible causes, separating natural and artificial ones, and finally mitigating the rapid changes we see today. Focusing specifically on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, scientists have identified the increase in this measure as one of the most relevant accelerating factors of climate change.
CO2 is a gas involved in the so-called greenhouse effect, which causes the average air temperature to increase over time. Is there something else space technology could offer besides helping collect precious data? Of course, there is, and it is a mitigating factor. Let us talk about CO2 removal technologies.
For years, devices have been used on space stations and crewed spacecraft to remove CO2 from their artificial atmosphere. New ongoing projects aim to apply those technologies to the planetary scale.
The well-known Moxie experiment aboard the Perseverance rover recently produced the first oxygen from the Martian CO2 atmosphere.
Another study led by the University of California and the Berkeley Lab designed a new technology to capture the CO2 available again in the Martian atmosphere. This new machine, called Biohybrid, exploits the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into building blocks for organic molecules. These molecules might then be the raw material to produce plastics, fuel, and even drugs in situ on Mars. The positive side effect of this technology for SDG 13 is that the Biohybrid can also pull CO2 from the air on our planet, even here on Earth!
SDG 14 – Life Below Water
Here we are again with many benefits from Earth Observation:
- mapping and monitoring natural and protected areas,
- assessment and monitoring of marine and coastal resources,
- fishing vessel tracking and navigation to monitor illegal, unregulated, and unreported fisheries,
- water temperature monitoring (see also SDG13),
- identification of algal blooms.
In addition, satellite data are currently helping to mitigate another major issue about water: plastic litter.
Many projects have started using satellite data to localize, track, and monitor plastic concentration. These data will help to take action not only about its removal but also to identify its sources and stop the increase of plastic waste pollution in the water.
Water and space also share benefits. Submarine habitats are helping astronauts to prepare for their life in space. Lessons learned in the construction of space habitats like the ISS could improve the construction of submarine habitats, which can be used for monitoring and running advanced studies of marine life and improving its preservation.
SDG 15 – Life On Land
Like SDG14, this goal is specifically about how humans could preserve other life forms than their own. Preserving biodiversity, fighting desertification, and managing forests: all these activities are part of this fundamental commitment.
Of course, space is a strategic ally for achieving this. Satellite data support the monitoring of endangered species (GPS tracking for wildlife) and protected areas, as well as detecting and monitoring wildfires that destroy acres of forests yearly all over the planet.
Nevertheless, monitoring, tracking, and detecting won’t be enough. The entire planet should be declared a natural reserve, an immense life sanctuary. Only exploiting the space environment could give a chance to reach that status, as shared in the Spacepolitans Manifesto.
SDG 16 – Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
Could space also support this? Correct! Satellite data support the UN peacekeeping missions to monitor wars and conflicts.
And has anyone mentioned that the laws and regulations for the peaceful use of space are a powerful justice asset? Correct again! The Space Treaty, the Moon Treaty, and other international space law agreements were written and signed for peace and justice.
They cover the following topics:
- non-appropriation of outer space by any one country,
- arms control,
- the freedom of exploration,
- liability for damage caused by space objects,
- the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts,
- the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment,
- the notification and registration of space activities and scientific investigations,
- the exploitation of natural resources in outer space,
- the settlement of disputes.
The development and strengthening of institutions like the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UNOOSA (UN Office for Outer Space Affairs) will be necessary to support the exponential growth of the new space economy.
SDG 17 – Partnership for the Goals
A successful sustainable development agenda requires partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil society. Many space missions and projects are based on international collaboration, putting together efforts, funds, and resources.
The best example is the International Space Station (ISS), which, for more than 20 years, has been the perfect result of the combined work of several countries. Even in times of conflict and division, the human outpost in LEO is the principal point of contact and cooperation for the fighting countries, despite some politicians trying to use it differently.
However, space isn’t just a topic for partnership between countries. It also involves many different companies from the private sector.
The various national space agencies, the UNOOSA, and the new space economy stakeholders are pushing further such collaborations. NASA Commercial Space Economy Program is a clear example, and so is the China Commercial Space Alliance, to highlight that public-private partnership is a worldwide key factor for space development and the success of many projects supporting the SDGs.
SDG 18? – Space For All
There is an initiative worth to be cited in this context, led by four international students, named SDG18 – Space for All. Their vision is to add another SDG focusing on space, and they want to bring it directly to the UN.
As seen in these last entries, their objective is to increase awareness about space as a great enabler supporting the SDG agenda. This potential new goal will differ from previous SDGs, although closer to SDG17, focusing on accelerating the Sustainable Development Agenda instead of addressing a particular issue. They have already held a UN75 Dialogue on this matter and are creating an organization to achieve their final goal!
Becoming Spacepolitans 