Sea & Space Conference – legal challenges and security aspects of the suborbital flights

The online conference on suborbital space took place on September 21, 2023. The conference organizers were: the Space Sciences Commission of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Branch in Gdańsk, the Baltic Sea and Space Cluster and the Academy of War Arts. The conference was held under the patronage of the Polish Space Agency.

The expert panel was led by prof. Academy of War Art Małgorzata Polkowska. The experts were: M.Sc. Bartosz Malinowski and mgr. Wojciech Zawadzki. Bartosz Malinowski gave an interesting presentation on legal challenges for suborbital flights. He demonstrated the use of suborbital flights commercially. He discussed performing space flights on the border of suborbital space. He presented legal regulation issues at the international, regional and national levels. He talked about the relationship between space and aviation law and their application to suborbital flights. He discussed the dilemmas for space lawyers. The speaker also talked about various attempts at regulation in selected countries with extensive space experience.

Wojciech Zawadzki took up an interesting topic on the border of legal sciences and security sciences in the field of war for minds using suborbital space. He drew attention to security aspects, including cybersecurity. He discussed the issue of pandemic threats, such as Covid-19. The speaker discussed the risks arising from information activities. He gave examples of manipulating societies through the use of online media in Western, Russian and Chinese societies. Both speeches aroused great interest among conference participants. Numerous questions posed to the speakers and a long discussion proved that suborbital space requires an effort by the international community to legally regulate the use of this space and eliminate the risks of its use by humans.