On 7 November 2025, the first SPHERE Space Policy Forum took place at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. The Forum was organised by the SPHERE Unit (Space Policies, Humanities and Exogeographical Research Ecosystem) of the LUISS Research Center for International and Strategic Studies (CISS), under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy, the Italian Space Agency, the British Interplanetary Society, the Italian Geographical Society, and SEDS – Students for the Exploration and Development of Space Italy, with the support of Persico Group.
The event brought together representatives from public institutions, industry, and academia to engage in a structured discussion on the need for multidisciplinary space governance. The core objective was explicit: to foster a sustained dialogue between technical expertise and social sciences and humanities in the formulation of space policies. The Forum marked the launch of a cycle of periodic initiatives dedicated to analysing space policy-making through an integrated, cross-disciplinary lens. SPHERE intends to pursue this path through interdisciplinary research, hybrid education, and continuous institutional and industrial dialogue.
Against this background, the Final Report of the Forum offers a clear diagnosis: contemporary space policy can no longer be governed through a purely technocratic approach. The rapid expansion of space activities, the multiplication of public and private actors, and the growing dependence of everyday life on space-based infrastructures have transformed outer space into a fully political domain, where strategic, legal, social, and ethical dimensions are inseparable from technical ones.
At the core of the report lies SPHERE’s central thesis: governance models dominated by engineering expertise and security rationales are no longer sufficient. Space policy today requires a structurally multidisciplinary framework, capable of integrating STEM knowledge with social sciences and humanities in a non-ancillary manner.
To operationalise this shift, the report introduces the “quadruple filter”, an analytical device designed to guide policy choices while preserving political discretion. Each space-related policy option should be assessed in terms of technical feasibility, social desirability, legal and ethical permissibility, and long-term systemic sustainability. The filter does not resolve political trade-offs but renders them explicit, intelligible, and subject to informed deliberation.
The Forum also identified five recurring tensions shaping the global space agenda: the balance between sovereignty and international cooperation; unequal access to the benefits of the space economy; environmental and systemic sustainability, on Earth and beyond; democratic legitimacy in setting priorities; and the growing mismatch between the complexity of decisions and the skills of decision-makers.
From a knowledge perspective, the report maps a changing ecosystem of competences. Alongside STEM disciplines, it highlights consolidated social sciences such as space law, space policy, and astropolitics, as well as emerging socio-humanistic fields—including space ethics, astrosociology, and exogeography—whose development responds to the commercial expansion of space activities, intensifying geopolitical competition, and growing recognition of long-term implications for human societies. Exogeography is proposed as a bridging discipline capable of integrating material and social dimensions of human expansion beyond Earth.
The discussions across the three thematic panels converge on a common conclusion: space is now a strategic, policy-driven domain, structurally shaped by public choices and regulatory frameworks, and increasingly dependent on hybrid competences. The report closes by reaffirming SPHERE’s commitment to advancing interdisciplinary research, developing hybrid educational paths, and providing policy-relevant analysis to institutions and industry. It also outlines mechanisms for continued engagement, including thematic working groups, policy briefs, and collaborative research initiatives, presenting the Forum not as an endpoint, but as the starting point of a longer collective endeavour.