In May 2025, PhD researcher Blake Harvey represented the PlanetStewards Project as a participant of the ‘Mission Sustainable: Ensuring Earth-Space Human Activities are Sustainable by Default’ workshop, hosted at the Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, and supported by the Institute of Advanced Studies, Space South Central, and the Surrey Law School’s research centers on environment, security, and conflict. The workshop brought together an exceptional mix of scientists, legal scholars, engineers, entrepreneurs, and policy experts to explore a timely and complex question: How can human activities in space become sustainable by default?

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As space-based systems become essential to life on Earth, including those for climate monitoring, disaster response, and communications, the need for responsible, sustainable approaches grows more urgent and complex. The ‘Mission Sustainable’ workshop reinforced the importance of integrated, systems-based thinking and the imperative that sustainability be designed into space activities from the outset – environmentally, technically, legally, and politically. Addressing the space sector’s environmental footprint and its complex earth-space interrelations requires robust, sustainable space governance, which the workshop sought to inform via the cross-disciplinary synthesis of key challenges and potential solutions.

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In view of the goal of a sustainable space industry and a circular space economy, a number of key themes emerged as panelists presented on central aspects and frameworks from their fields of discipline. Technical experts discussed key challenges including tracking and managing orbital debris, the lack of standardized interfaces, and lifecycle resource efficiency, with financial experts agreeing that investment, insurance, and market incentives can be shaped to encourage more responsible and sustainable space practices in the industry. Legal discussions highlighted emerging frameworks like the European Union’s proposed Space Act and the European Space Agency’s Zero Debris Charter, which aim to create regulatory structures that support transparency, accountability, and environmental stewardship in orbit. Further, diplomacy and security experts highlighted the need for peaceful governance frameworks, assessing the role of state and non-state institutions.

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Critically, participants crafted an interdisciplinary approach to making earth-space human activities sustainable by default, engaging hypothetical future scenarios to propose cross-disciplinary risk and governance assessments and determining a mix of technical, legal, financial and governance mechanisms to make today’s most consequential space activities sustainable. The scenario exercise fostered meaningful, transdisciplinary group synthesis of key avenues for sustainable space governance, contributing to the workshop plenary discussions and which will be further developed in the workshop report.