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China has recently taken a series of responsive actions, including a special maritime law enforcement operation on Saturday in waters east of Taiwan island, after Japan and the Philippines announced plans to start talks on maritime delimitation in the waters east of China's Taiwan island. A Chinese expert said the coordinated moves demonstrate China's sovereignty and jurisdiction, as well as its capability and resolve to safeguard its maritime rights and interests. 

China launched a special maritime law enforcement operation, led by China's Ministry of Transport and jointly undertaken by the Fujian Maritime Safety Administration, the Guangdong Maritime Safety Administration, the Eastern Navigation Service Center of the National Maritime Safety Administration, and the East China Sea rescue bureau, in the waters east of Taiwan island on Saturday. It is a necessary move in response to Japan and the Philippines' unilateral announcement of the "maritime delimitation talks" on the east of China's Taiwan island, which constitutes a serious violation of China's territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

The move came after Japan and the Philippines claimed last month that they would begin so-called formal talks on delimiting the maritime boundary of the so-called exclusive economic zone and the continental shelf between the two countries "in accordance with international law," according to a Reuters report.

Previously, a necessary responsive operation was carried out on June 1, as the China Coast Guard (CCG) task group conducted routine law-enforcement patrols in accordance with the law in the waters east of China's Taiwan island, CCG's spokesperson Jiang Lue said.

"We urge Japan and the Philippines to immediately cease all illegal acts that undermine China's sovereign rights and interests. The CCG will continue to strengthen control and management over relevant waters and take real actions to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests," Jiang said, according to CCG.

No matter it is law enforcement operations of CCG or maritime safety administration, these operations affirm China's sovereignty and jurisdiction over waters east of the Taiwan island, showing the country's resolve, capability and maritime management strength to safeguard maritime rights and interests, Zhang Junshe, a Chinese military affairs expert, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Given the complex maritime conditions in the waters east of Taiwan island, which present a test for vessel performance and law enforcement operations, these operations demonstrate that CCG and maritime authorities are fully capable of conducting regular law enforcement patrols and maritime control in the area, Zhang said.

It further shows that China has set up a sound framework for protecting sovereignty, maritime rights and interests and managing waters around Taiwan island, according to Zhang.

The so-called unilateral delimitation talks between Japan and the Philippines are tantamount to attempting to "carve up" these waters, which seriously infringes upon China's maritime sovereignty and rights and interests, Zhang added.

According to China's domestic law and international law including the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), China has exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in this area. Japan and the Philippines' so-called maritime delimitation talks constitute a severe violation of China's maritime rights and interests, UNCLOS and other international law and basic norms governing international relations, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stressed during a previous press conference on May 29 after the claim by Tokyo and Manila.

"The so-called delimitation talks are completely illegal, null and void, and will have no effect on China's claims to rights in the area east of the Taiwan island or exercise of China's lawful rights," Mao said, adding that China urges Japan and the Philippines to immediately stop any violation of China's maritime rights and interests and take concrete actions to uphold regional peace and stability.

In violation of the international law, Zhang said that Japan and the Philippines aim to jointly contain China and restrict its maritime operations as part of their coordination with the so-called Indo-Pacific strategy with the plan.

The expert added that Japan also seeks to provoke China alongside the Philippines in adjacent waters, hoping to ease the pressure from China's countermeasures over its actions concerning the Diaoyu Islands.

In response to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities' echoing of the move by Japan and Philippines, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office said on June 3 that compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits belong to the Chinese nation, according to CCTV News.

"We should stand firm on our national stance, uphold national righteousness, and jointly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity as well as the overall interests of the Chinese nation. If the DPP authorities dare to collude with external forces and betray national interests, they will surely be spurned by compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits and punished by history," Zhu added.

Faced with public opinion pressure, the DPP authorities still haven't voiced strong protests. Such a compromising stance essentially amounts to acts that harm national and ethnic interests, Zhang said. "Chinese people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits should work together to safeguard our country's sovereignty, maritime rights and interests as well as national interests," he added.

Regardless of how external forces behave, the steps taken by China's relevant departments make clear China's position, the expert said, and is a testament to China's resolve and capacity to secure national sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.

In his keynote speech at the 23rd Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not mention Taiwan — a rare omission — and instead highly praised a series of outcomes achieved during US President Donald Trump's recent visit to China. In response, Zhu Fenglian, spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said on Wednesday that the Taiwan question is China's internal affair and brooks no external interference. She said that maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits represents the greatest common interest shared by China and the US.

A think tank report titled "China-EU Cooperation on Environment and Climate: Progress and Prospects" was released globally on Friday.

The report was jointly released by the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Ecological Civilization, the National Energy Conservation Center, the Xinhua Institute and the Institutes of Science and Development under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

It consists of five sections, namely the introduction, bilateral joint efforts to build a community of all life on Earth, deepened bilateral cooperation to address climate change, concrete progress in bilateral cooperation on the eco-environment, and steady long-term development of bilateral cooperation concerning the environment and climate.

In the face of ecological and environmental challenges, China and the European Union (EU), the largest developing country and the largest union of developed countries, respectively, must shoulder their responsibilities, carry out cooperation on the environment and climate, and work together to maintain sustainable development of the Earth, according to the report.

Noting green as the distinctive color of China-EU cooperation, the report said this cooperation not only enriches and develops the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, but also directly advances the environmental governance, trade and investment of both sides, benefiting the entire world.

Looking at the future, the two sides should work together to promote more in-depth and pragmatic cooperation, further dovetail their environmental and climate policies through high-level dialogue and cooperation mechanisms, establish a long-term cooperation framework, and promote global environmental governance and climate action, the report stated.

The report also called for the further strengthening of the bilateral green partnership, and jointly building a community of all life on Earth, and make contributions to promoting a cleaner and more beautiful world.

A new batch of 34 sugar apple packaging factories and 1,263 orchards in Taiwan have been registered by the General Administration of Customs, which will create favorable conditions for their entry to the mainland, Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a press briefing on Friday. Zhu also noted that the sugar apple season is approaching in the island.

Since the announcement of the resumption of market entry for sugar apples in June, 37 sugar apple packaging factories and 1,288 orchards in Taitung county have been approved by the mainland. Businesses can inquire about the relevant information on the customs website. Packaging factories and orchards that have not yet passed the audit can learn the rectification requirements, according to Zhu.

Zhu expressed the mainland's willingness to have discussions with relevant parties in Taiwan to resume the entry of more agricultural and fishery products.

Due to the repeated instances of quarantine pests being detected, the mainland suspended the entry of sugar apples from Taiwan in September 2021 to mitigate the risk of plant epidemics, Xinhua News Agency reported.

The resolution adopted by UNESCO to establish a UNESCO International Institute for STEM Education (IISTEM) in Shanghai will assist China in sharing its education experience and growing to be a leader in global STEM education, an expert told the Global Times on Wednesday.

During the 42nd Session of the UNESCO General Conference in Paris last week, UNESCO announced the establishment of the IISTEM in Shanghai. This marks the first UNESCO Category 1 Institute for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics to be established in China.

Category 1 institutes are crucial to UNESCO's mission. They act as incubators for new ideas and serve as standard-setters, facilitators of international cooperation, hubs for information sharing and capacity builders within their respective areas of competence. 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at an earlier press conference that the Chinese government attaches great importance to education and treats STEM education as a key approach to cultivating innovative and versatile talent. 

"We will act earnestly on our commitment, collaborate with UNESCO to implement the resolution and work for the early establishment and operation of the institute to contribute more to the UN's agenda for sustainable development as well as world peace and development," said Wang. 

The move was preceded by UNESCO's resolution to establish a teacher education center in Shanghai Normal University in 2017. The teacher education center is a UNESCO Category 2 Center and followed two other Category 2 education centers in China: the International Research and Training Centre for Rural Education in Beijing and the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province.

The establishment of the IISTEM demonstrates the recognition of China's national strength and a nod to China's commitment to building a community of shared future for mankind, Ning Bo, a professor with the Research Institute for International and Comparative Education of Shanghai Normal University, who is also a project manager at the UNESCO teacher education center, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The decision is also a reflection of Shanghai's increasing prominence in international education.

Shanghai topped two consecutive rounds (2009 and 2012) of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, a triennial survey of 15-year-old students that focuses on proficiency in reading, mathematics and science. The city's education system stands out as one of the strongest in the world, according to a report by the World Bank.

"Finland was a paragon when people talked about a successful education system. But global attention has been diverted to Shanghai thanks to the city's stellar performance in PISA," said Ning. 

Shanghai's policies and investments have created a great teacher workforce, established clear learning standards and regular student assessments, and struck a balance between autonomy and accountability in school management, the report said.

"Shanghai is a pioneer in China's opening-up and reform in all sectors. The city eagerly welcomes international institutions like IISTEM to come and contribute to the development of its cosmopolitan nature," Ning said.

The institute is a fresh example of China's efforts to increase its influence on the world stage and play a leading role in international organizations, said the professor.

Technically, it's a platform for China to share its education experience with the world, especially in the field of STEM. Expertise and resources from around the world will be drawn to Shanghai, so it will advance the development of STEM education in China and promote Shanghai's economic and social development, Ning noted. 

"China has achieved globally recognized progress in economic and social development. Through this opportunity, we aspire for the world to gain a comprehensive understanding of China and its developmental path from an educational and cultural perspective," Ning said.

BOSTON — Long before anyone opened a bank account or rented a safe deposit box, wealth protection demanded a bit of guile and a broken beer jug. A 3,100-year-old jewelry stash was discovered in just such a vessel, unearthed from an ancient settlement in Israel called Megiddo in 2010. Now the find is providing clues to how affluent folk hoarded their valuables at a time when fortunes rested on fancy metalwork, not money.

At the fortress city of Megiddo, a high-ranking Canaanite family stashed jewelry in a beer jug and hid it in a courtyard’s corner under a bowl, possibly under a veil of cloth, Eran Arie of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, said November 17 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.
The hoard’s owners removed the jug’s neck and inserted a bundle of 35 silver items, including earrings and a bracelet, which were wrapped in two linen cloths. Other valuables were then added to the jug, including around 1,300 beads of silver and electrum — an alloy of gold and silver — that had probably been threaded into an elaborate necklace. There were 10 additional pieces of electrum jewelry, including a pair of basket-shaped earrings, each displaying a carved, long-legged bird.
A Canaanite city palace stood only about 30 meters from the Iron Age building that housed the courtyard, Arie said. Due to the lesser building’s strategic location, its inhabitants must have held key government positions, he proposed. “For the family that lived there, the hoard represented the lion’s share of their wealth.” Those family members presumably fled around the time the structure that held the jewelry hoard was destroyed in a catastrophic event, possibly a battle.
The Megiddo hoard was hidden but not buried, giving its owners quick access to their valuables. But no one ever retrieved the treasure. “We will never know why no one returned to claim this hoard,” Arie said.

Earthquake warning systems face a tough trade-off: To give enough time to take cover or shut down emergency systems, alerts may need to go out before it’s clear how strong the quake will be. And that raises the risk of false alarms, undermining confidence in any warning system.

A new study aims to quantify the best-case scenario for warning time from a hypothetical earthquake early warning system. The result? There is no magic formula for deciding when to issue an alert, the researchers report online March 21 in Science Advances.
“We have a choice when issuing earthquake warnings,” says study leader Sarah Minson, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, in Menlo Park, Calif. “You have to think about your relative risk appetite: What is the cost of taking action versus the cost of the damage you’re trying to prevent?”

For locations far from a large quake’s origin, waiting for clear signs of risk before sending an alert may mean waiting too long for people to be able to take protective action. But for those tasked with managing critical infrastructure, such as airports, trains or nuclear power plants, an early warning even if false may be preferable to an alert coming too late (SN: 4/19/14, p. 16).

Alerts issued by earthquake early warning systems, called EEWs, are based on several parameters: the depth and location of the quake’s origin, its estimated magnitude and the ground properties, such as the types of soil and rock that seismic waves would travel through.

“The trick to earthquake early warning systems is that it’s a misnomer,” Minson says. Such systems don’t warn that a quake is imminent. Instead, they alert people that a quake has already happened, giving them precious seconds — perhaps a minute or two — to prepare for imminent ground shaking.
Estimating magnitude turns out to be a sticking point. It is impossible to distinguish a powerful earthquake in its earliest stages from a small, weak quake, according to a 2016 study by a team of researchers that included Men-Andrin Meier, a seismologist at Caltech who also coauthors the new study. Estimating magnitude for larger quakes also takes more time, because the rupture of the fault lasts perhaps several seconds longer – a significant chunk of time when it comes to EEW. And there is a trade-off in terms of distance: For locations farther away, there is less certainty the shaking will reach that far.
In the new study, Minson, Meier and colleagues used standard ground-motion prediction equations to calculate the minimum quake magnitude that would produce shaking at any distance. Then, they calculated how quickly an EEW could estimate whether the quake would exceed that minimum magnitude to qualify for an alert. Finally, the team estimated how long it would take for the shaking to strike a location. Ultimately, they determined, EEW holds the greatest benefit for users who are willing to take action early, even with the risk of false alarms. The team hopes its paper provides a framework to help emergency response managers make those decisions.

EEWs are already in operation around the world, from Mexico to Japan. USGS, in collaboration with researchers and universities, has been developing the ShakeAlert system for the earthquake-prone U.S. West Coast. It is expected be rolled out this year, although plans for future expansion may be in jeopardy: President Trump’s proposed 2019 budget cuts the USGS program’s $8.2 million in funding. It’s unclear whether Congress will spare those funds.

The value of any alert system will ultimately depend on whether it fulfills its objective — getting people to take cover swiftly in order to save lives. “More than half of injuries from past earthquakes are associated with things falling on people,” says Richard Allen, a seismologist at the University of California, Berkeley who was not involved in the new study. “A few seconds of warning can more than halve the number of injuries.”

But the researchers acknowledge there is a danger in issuing too many false alarms. People may become complacent and ignore future warnings. “We are playing a precautionary game,” Minson says. “It’s a warning system, not a guarantee.”

When you’re stressed and anxious, you might feel your heart race. Is your heart racing because you’re afraid? Or does your speeding heart itself contribute to your anxiety? Both could be true, a new study in mice suggests.

By artificially increasing the heart rates of mice, scientists were able to increase anxiety-like behaviors — ones that the team then calmed by turning off a particular part of the brain. The study, published in the March 9 Nature, shows that in high-risk contexts, a racing heart could go to your head and increase anxiety. The findings could offer a new angle for studying and, potentially, treating anxiety disorders.
The idea that body sensations might contribute to emotions in the brain goes back at least to one of the founders of psychology, William James, says Karl Deisseroth, a neuroscientist at Stanford University. In James’ 1890 book The Principles of Psychology, he put forward the idea that emotion follows what the body experiences. “We feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble,” James wrote.

The brain certainly can sense internal body signals, a phenomenon called interoception. But whether those sensations — like a racing heart — can contribute to emotion is difficult to prove, says Anna Beyeler, a neuroscientist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Bordeaux. She studies brain circuitry related to emotion and wrote a commentary on the new study but was not involved in the research. “I’m sure a lot of people have thought of doing these experiments, but no one really had the tools,” she says.

Deisseroth has spent his career developing those tools. He is one of the scientists who developed optogenetics — a technique that uses viruses to modify the genes of specific cells to respond to bursts of light (SN: 6/18/21; SN: 1/15/10). Scientists can use the flip of a light switch to activate or suppress the activity of those cells.
In the new study, Deisseroth and his colleagues used a light attached to a tiny vest over a mouse’s genetically engineered heart to change the animal’s heart rate. When the light was off, a mouse’s heart pumped at about 600 beats per minute. But when the team turned on a light that flashed at 900 beats per minutes, the mouse’s heartbeat followed suit. “It’s a nice reasonable acceleration, [one a mouse] would encounter in a time of stress or fear,” Deisseroth explains.

When the mice felt their hearts racing, they showed anxiety-like behavior. In risky scenarios — like open areas where a little mouse might be someone’s lunch — the rodents slunk along the walls and lurked in darker corners. When pressing a lever for water that could sometimes be coupled with a mild shock, mice with normal heart rates still pressed without hesitation. But mice with racing hearts decided they’d rather go thirsty.

“Everybody was expecting that, but it’s the first time that it has been clearly demonstrated,” Beyeler says.
The researchers also scanned the animals’ brains to find areas that might be processing the increased heart rate. One of the biggest signals, Deisseroth says, came from the posterior insula (SN: 4/25/16). “The insula was interesting because it’s highly connected with interoceptive circuitry,” he explains. “When we saw that signal, [our] interest was definitely piqued.”

Using more optogenetics, the team reduced activity in the posterior insula, which decreased the mice’s anxiety-like behaviors. The animals’ hearts still raced, but they behaved more normally, spending some time in open areas of mazes and pressing levers for water without fear.
A lot of people are very excited about the work, says Wen Chen, the branch chief of basic medicine research for complementary and integrative health at the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health in Bethesda, Md. “No matter what kind of meetings I go into, in the last two days, everybody brought up this paper,” says Chen, who wasn’t involved in the research.

The next step, Deisseroth says, is to look at other parts of the body that might affect anxiety. “We can feel it in our gut sometimes, or we can feel it in our neck or shoulders,” he says. Using optogenetics to tense a mouse’s muscles, or give them tummy butterflies, might reveal other pathways that produce fearful or anxiety-like behaviors.

Understanding the link between heart and head could eventually factor into how doctors treat panic and anxiety, Beyeler says. But the path between the lab and the clinic, she notes, is much more convoluted than that of the heart to the head.

An experimental treatment for endometriosis, a painful gynecological disease that affects some 190 million people worldwide, may one day offer new hope for easing symptoms.

Monthly antibody injections reversed telltale signs of endometriosis in monkeys, researchers report February 22 in Science Translational Medicine. The antibody targets IL-8, a molecule that whips up inflammation inside the scattered, sometimes bleeding lesions that mark the disease. After neutralizing IL-8, those hallmark lesions shrink, the team found.

The new treatment is “pretty potent,” says Philippa Saunders, a reproductive scientist at the University of Edinburgh who was not involved with work. The study’s authors haven’t reported a cure, she points out, but their antibody does seem to have an impact. “I think it’s really very promising,” she says.

Many scientists think endometriosis occurs when bits of the uterine lining — the endometrium — slough off during menstruation. Instead of exiting via the vagina, they voyage in the other direction: up through the fallopian tubes. Those bits of tissue then trespass through the body, sprouting lesions where they land. They’ll glom onto the ovaries, fallopian tubes, bladder and other spots outside of the uterus and take on a life of their own, Saunders says.
The lesions can grow nerve cells, form tough nubs of tissue and even bleed during menstrual cycles. They can also kick off chronic bouts of pelvic pain. If you have endometriosis, you can experience “pain when you urinate, pain when you defecate, pain when you have sex, pain when you move around,” Saunders says. People with the disease can also struggle with infertility and depression, she adds. “It’s really nasty.”
Once diagnosed, patients face a dearth of treatment options — there’s no cure, only therapies to alleviate symptoms. Surgery to remove lesions can help, but symptoms often come back.

The disease affects at least 10 percent of girls, women and transgender men in their reproductive years, Saunders says. And people typically suffer for years — about eight on average — before a diagnosis. “Doctors consider menstrual pelvic pain a very common thing,” says Ayako Nishimoto-Kakiuchi, a pharmacologist at Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. in Tokyo. Endometriosis “is underestimated in the clinic,” she says. “I strongly believe that this disease has been understudied.”

Hormonal drugs that stop ovulation and menstruation can also offer relief, says Serdar Bulun, a reproductive endocrinologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago not involved with the new study. But those drugs come with side effects and aren’t ideal for people trying to become pregnant. “I see these patients day in and day out,” he says. “I see how much they suffer, and I feel like we are not doing enough.”

Nishimoto-Kakiuchi’s team engineered an antibody that grabs onto the inflammatory factor IL-8, a protein that scientists have previously fingered as one potential culprit in the disease. The antibody acts like a garbage collector, Nishimoto-Kakiuchi says. It grabs IL-8, delivers it to the cell’s waste disposal machinery, and then heads out to snare more IL-8.

The team tested the antibody in cynomolgus monkeys that were surgically modified to have the disease. (Endometriosis rarely shows up spontaneously in these monkeys, the scientists discovered previously after screening more than 600 females.) The team treated 11 monkeys with the antibody injection once a month for six months. In these animals, lesions shriveled and the adhesive tissue that glues them to the body thinned out, too. Before this study, Nishimoto-Kakiuchi says, the team didn’t think such signs of endometriosis were reversible.
Her company has now started a Phase I clinical trial to test the safety of therapy in humans. The treatment is one of several endometriosis therapies scientists are testing (SN: 7/19/19) . Other trials will test new hormonal drugs, robot-assisted surgery and behavioral interventions.

Doctors need new options to help people with the disease, Saunders says. “There’s a huge unmet clinical need.”

SpaceX’s rapidly growing fleet of Starlink internet satellites now make up half of all active satellites in Earth orbit.

On February 27, the aerospace company launched 21 new satellites to join its broadband internet Starlink fleet. That brought the total number of active Starlink satellites to 3,660, or about 50 percent of the nearly 7,300 active satellites in orbit, according to analysis by astronomer Jonathan McDowell using data from SpaceX and the U.S. Space Force.
“These big low-orbit internet constellations have come from nowhere in 2019, to dominating the space environment in 2023,” says McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. “It really is a massive shift and a massive industrialization of low orbit.”

SpaceX has been launching Starlink satellites since 2019 with the goal of bringing broadband internet to remote parts of the globe. And for just as long, astronomers have been warning that the bright satellites could mess up their view of the cosmos by leaving streaks on telescope images as they glide past (SN: 3/12/20).

Even the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits more than 500 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, is vulnerable to these satellite streaks, as well as those from other satellite constellations. From 2002 to 2021, the percentage of Hubble images affected by light from low-orbit satellites increased by about 50 percent, astronomer Sandor Kruk of the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, and colleagues report March 2 in Nature Astronomy.

The number of images partially blocked by satellites is still small, the team found, rising from nearly 3 percent of images taken between 2002 and 2005 to just over 4 percent between 2018 and 2021 for one of Hubble’s cameras. But there are already thousands more Starlink satellites now than there were in 2021.

“The fraction of [Hubble] images crossed by satellites is currently small with a negligible impact on science,” Kruk and colleagues write. “However, the number of satellites and space debris will only increase in the future.” The team predicts that by the 2030s, the probability of a satellite crossing Hubble’s field of view any time it takes an image will be between 20 and 50 percent.
The sudden jump in Starlink satellites also poses a problem for space traffic, says astronomer Samantha Lawler of the University of Regina in Canada. Starlink satellites all orbit at a similar distance from Earth, just above 500 kilometers.

“Starlink is the densest patch of space that has ever existed,” Lawler says. The satellites are constantly navigating out of each other’s way to avoid collisions (SN: 2/12/09). And it’s a popular orbital altitude — Hubble is there, and so is the International Space Station and the Chinese space station.
“If there is some kind of collision [between Starlinks], some kind of mishap, it could immediately affect human lives,” Lawler says.

SpaceX launches Starlink satellites roughly once per week — it launched 51 more on March 3. And they’re not the only company launching constellations of internet satellites. By the 2030s, there could be 100,000 satellites crowding low Earth orbit.

So far, there are no international regulations to curb the number of satellites a private company can launch or to limit which orbits they can occupy.

“The speed of commercial development is much faster than the speed of regulation change,” McDowell says. “There needs to be an overhaul of space traffic management and space regulation generally to cope with these massive commercial projects.”