Space Race: Orbital Pathways as the Power Center of the Twenty-First Century

Orbit or Obsolescence: The New Contest for World Order

29 December, 2025 

“On your marks, get set, rockets!”—the space race is well underway. Whoever dominates outer space secures structural military, economic, and regulatory advantages—not only above, but here on Earth. In her article “GPS Security in Space” (29 December 2025) in Europäische Sicherheit & Technik, Agora Strategy Fellow Antje Nötzold portrays space as a critical arena of geopolitical competition. The ultimate prize is no longer the Moon. It is sustained presence in cislunar space, control over strategic orbits, and access to the Lagrange points. There, the coordinates of future power projection are being drawn.

Of 213 rocket launches in 2024, 145 were carried out by the United States and 68 by China—nearly 80 percent of global activity—flanked by mega-constellations such as Starlink, Starshield, Guowang, and Qianfan. Europe, despite Galileo and Copernicus, remains dependent in critical domains. Germany is responding with multi-billion-euro investments in a Bundeswehr space security architecture, while the EU advances its “European Space Shield”. This “European Space Shield” is conceived as a flagship project of the European Defence Roadmap 2030.

Nötzold’s diagnosis is unequivocal: without operational capacity in orbit, there can be no strategic sovereignty. Germany’s initiative is therefore more than a procurement program. It is a bid for influence in the defining strategic domain of the twenty-first century.

The full article is available at: GSP - Sicherheit im Weltraum von Antje Nötzold.