Who Sets the Rules for Earth Observation Governance?

Key Takeaways

• Earth observation governance still rests on a non-binding 1986 United Nations resolution.
• The United States, European Union, and others license imaging satellites under sharply different rules.
• Open data from Copernicus and Landsat decides who can afford to watch the planet.

The 1986 UN Principles That Still Anchor Satellite Imaging Rules

On December 3, 1986, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 41/65, a short document of fifteen principles that still forms the backbone of earth observation governance four decades later. The text emerged from years of argument inside the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), where developing nations wanted a veto over imagery taken of their territory and spacefaring states wanted the freedom to observe anything from orbit. The compromise rejected prior consent. Any country may photograph any other from space, and the sensed state gets access to data about its own territory on a non-discriminatory basis and reasonable cost terms. These Remote Sensing Principles were never turned into a treaty, so they carry moral and customary weight rather than binding force.

That distinction matters more now than it did in 1986, when a handful of governments owned every imaging satellite. The principles sit on top of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which makes each country internationally responsible for the space activities of its private companies. A startup launching a camera into orbit is, legally, an extension of its home government. National licensing systems exist precisely because states must answer for what their operators do. The gap between a 1986 consensus built for state-run programs and a 2026 market full of private constellations defines almost every current debate about how imagery should be regulated, shared, and restricted, a tension New Space Economy has tracked in its coverage of earth observation policy.

How Washington Licenses Commercial Remote Sensing

The United States built its rulebook around the Land Remote Sensing Policy Act of 1992, which handed the Department of Commerce authority over private imaging satellites. That authority now lives in the Office of Space Commerce, whose Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) office issues every license a domestic operator needs before launch. For years the system was slow and opaque, with operators complaining that approvals lagged behind the cameras they wanted to fly. A 2020 overhaul rewrote the regulations at 15 CFR Part 960 and sorted applicants into tiers based on whether their capabilities are already available from other operators inside or outside the country.

The tiering idea is simple. A camera resolution that competitors already sell abroad earns the lightest oversight, because restricting an American company would not keep that imagery off the market. Novel or highly sensitive systems face tougher conditions, including possible limits on imaging certain locations or delaying delivery of certain scenes, an authority sometimes called shutter control. Defense and State Department officials weigh in during review, since national security and foreign policy can both turn on who buys a picture. The reform cut decision timelines and gave operators clearer expectations, though the CRSRA process still draws criticism from companies that want faster reviews of tier conditions as foreign capability advances. The broader machinery of United States space governance connects this licensing office to launch regulators, spectrum authorities, and military buyers who together shape what a commercial operator can build and sell.

Europe’s Push for One Set of Earth Observation Governance Rules

Europe approaches earth observation governance from the opposite direction, with too many rules rather than one. Thirteen member states currently run their own national authorization systems, and a company operating across borders can face thirteen separate approval processes. Germany regulates high-resolution optical and radar imagery through its Satellite Data Security Act, known as SatDSiG, enacted in 2007 and built around graduated approvals for sensitive scenes. France, Spain, and others maintain their own variants. The result raises cost and complexity for exactly the small and mid-sized firms that European policymakers want to grow.

The European Commission moved to fix that on June 25, 2025, when it published a proposal for an EU Space Act, the bloc’s attempt at one harmonized regime covering safety, resilience, and sustainability across space activities. For imaging operators, the appeal is a single authorization that would replace the patchwork of national licenses and let a company sell across the single market without renegotiating compliance in each capital. The proposal is moving through the ordinary legislative procedure, with the Council of the European Union offering amendments in December 2025 and the European Parliament adding its own revisions on March 3, 2026, so the final shape remains unsettled as of June 2026. A national security clause that would let member states carve out exemptions has drawn particular scrutiny from analysts who fear it could reintroduce the fragmentation the law is meant to remove. New Space Economy has examined how these global policies governing earth observation interact across jurisdictions.

The table below compares how major jurisdictions authorize commercial imaging satellites, summarizing the main legal instrument and the governing approach behind each.

Open Data Policies and Who Pays for Free Imagery

Rules about who may operate a satellite tell only half the story. The other half is price, and the most consequential decisions of the past two decades have made government imagery free. In 2008 the United States Geological Survey (USGS) opened the entire Landsat archive at no cost, reversing a long history of charging hundreds of dollars per scene. Downloads jumped from a few thousand a year into the millions, and a generation of agricultural, forestry, and climate applications grew on top of data that had previously sat behind a paywall. The next satellite in the series, Landsat Next, is under development with a launch targeted for 2029 and will carry far more spectral bands than its predecessors.

Europe went further. The Copernicus program, run jointly by the European Union and the European Space Agency (ESA), publishes its Sentinel imagery under a free and open data policy that lets anyone, anywhere, download radar and optical scenes without charge or licensing fees. The Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem now distributes petabytes through cloud access rather than file-by-file downloads. Open data carries a hidden governance question, because someone funds these systems through taxes, and free public imagery competes with the products commercial firms try to sell. Striking a balance between a public good and a private market sits underneath nearly every budget cycle, and it shapes the earth observation market that private operators are trying to build.

Coordinating the World’s Satellites Through GEO and CEOS

No single body governs earth observation globally, so coordination falls to voluntary organizations that align standards, share data, and reduce duplication. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is the largest, a partnership of more than one hundred member governments plus participating organizations that pushes for open, interoperable data in service of public goals such as disaster response and food security. GEO’s central project, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), links data catalogs from member agencies so a user can find imagery across providers rather than searching each archive alone. GEO approved its Post-2025 Strategy at the GEO-20 Plenary in Rome on May 7, 2025, shifting the organization toward delivering finished decision-ready products instead of merely brokering access to raw data.

That strategy carries into the GEO-21 Plenary and Symposium scheduled for Geneva from May 26 to 28, 2026, hosted at the World Meteorological Organization under a theme of investing in usable earth intelligence. Alongside GEO sits the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), which coordinates the technical side, harmonizing calibration, data formats, and mission planning among the agencies that actually fly the hardware. These groups hold no enforcement power and cannot compel any country to share a single image. Their influence comes from consensus, common standards, and the simple fact that interoperable data is worth more than isolated archives. The agencies behind them appear throughout the broader map of global space agencies that supply most of the world’s public imagery.

Privacy, Security, and the Limits of Looking Down

Governance is at its sharpest where imagery touches privacy and national security. Resolution limits are the oldest tool. For years American operators could not sell imagery sharper than 50 centimeters per pixel, a ceiling relaxed in stages as foreign competitors closed the gap and the restriction stopped serving its purpose. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which sees through cloud and darkness, raised fresh questions because it can detect activity that optical cameras miss, and regulators have wrestled with how tightly to control it. Operators such as ICEYE and Capella Space now sell radar imagery commercially, and their products have been used to monitor military movements that governments would once have classified.

The war in Ukraine turned commercial imagery into a public instrument, as companies including Maxar and Planetreleased scenes of troop buildups and damage that news organizations and analysts used in near real time. That visibility cuts against the older assumption that only states held such pictures, and it forces a recurring question about whether a private firm should publish imagery that affects an active conflict. Privacy concerns run closer to home, since high-cadence constellations now revisit most of the planet daily, and individuals rarely consent to being imaged. New Space Economy has documented these privacy and national security concerns as commercial resolution climbs and revisit rates shrink toward continuous coverage of populated areas.

The Money Behind the Rules

Regulation shapes a real and growing market, which is why operators lobby so hard over tier conditions and data policy. The commercial earth observation sector reached roughly $5 billion in annual value as of 2024, and forecasts diverge widely depending on how each firm counts derived analytics versus raw imagery. Grand View Research valued the market near $5.1 billion in 2024 and projects about $7.24 billion by 2030, a measured single-digit growth rate. Novaspace, the firm created from the merger of Euroconsult and NSR, estimates the market will pass $8 billion by 2033, with services growing faster than data sales. Earlier NSR work projected a far larger $73 billion opportunity by 2030 once analytics and derived products are included, a figure that shows how much the answer depends on definitions.

The following table summarizes those projections with their sources, since combining forecasts from different methodologies would mislead more than it informs.

By 2024 the USGS counted 472 earth observation satellites in orbit, 270 of them privately operated and 202 run by governments, a balance that flipped from the state-dominated picture of the 1986 principles. Companies including BlackSky compete on revisit speed and analytics rather than raw resolution alone, and investors increasingly value the software layer that turns pixels into answers. That commercial weight is what makes the rules contested, a dynamic explored in New Space Economy’s earth observation data marketplace analysis.

Summary

The deepest fault line in this field is not technical but generational. A consensus written when only superpowers owned cameras in orbit now governs a market where a venture-backed startup can image a war zone before a government analyst finishes a briefing. Every active reform, from the tier reviews inside the Office of Space Commerce to the long passage of the EU Space Act, is an attempt to reconcile that old settlement with new reality without breaking the non-discriminatory access that the 1986 principles promised. The next decade will test whether voluntary coordination through GEO and national licensing can keep pace with constellations that see more, sell faster, and answer to shareholders as much as to states. Whoever resolves that tension, through binding law or quiet standard-setting, will shape not just an industry but the basic question of who gets to see the planet and on what terms.

Appendix: Useful Books Available on Amazon

• Handbook of Space Law
• Space Law: A Treatise
• Remote Sensing of the Environment
• Introduction to the Physics and Techniques of Remote Sensing
• Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation
• Eye in the Sky

Appendix: Top Questions Answered in This Article

What is earth observation governance?

Earth observation governance is the combined set of treaties, national laws, licensing systems, and voluntary standards that control how satellites image the planet and how that imagery is shared, sold, or restricted. It spans international principles, domestic regulators such as the United States Office of Space Commerce, and coordinating bodies like the Group on Earth Observations.

Are the 1986 UN Remote Sensing Principles legally binding?

No. The Principles in General Assembly Resolution 41/65 are a non-binding instrument rather than a treaty. They carry persuasive and customary weight, establishing norms such as non-discriminatory data access for the sensed state, but no enforcement mechanism compels compliance. Binding obligations come instead from national laws that each country enacts under the Outer Space Treaty.

Who regulates commercial satellite imaging in the United States?

The Office of Space Commerce, through its Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs office, licenses private imaging satellites under 15 CFR Part 960. A 2020 reform created a tiered system based on whether comparable capabilities already exist elsewhere. Reviews involve the Departments of Defense and State for national security and foreign policy considerations.

What would the EU Space Act change for earth observation?

The proposed EU Space Act, published in June 2025, would replace divergent national licensing regimes with one harmonized authorization across the European Union. For imaging operators that means a single approval to operate across the single market. The proposal is still moving through the legislative process as of June 2026 and could change before adoption.

Why is Copernicus and Landsat data free?

Both programs adopted open data policies to maximize public benefit and stimulate downstream industries. The United States opened the Landsat archive in 2008, and Europe’s Copernicus program distributes Sentinel imagery at no charge. Free public data accelerates science and applications, though it raises ongoing budget and competition questions because it sits alongside commercial markets.

What does the Group on Earth Observations do?

The Group on Earth Observations coordinates more than one hundred member governments and partner organizations to make earth observation data open and interoperable. Its flagship effort, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, links member data catalogs. GEO sets no binding rules and relies on consensus, common standards, and the shared value of connected archives.

How do governments limit satellite image resolution?

Regulators can cap the sharpness operators sell, delay delivery of certain scenes, or restrict imaging of specific areas, a power sometimes called shutter control. The United States once limited commercial imagery to 50 centimeters per pixel, then relaxed the ceiling as foreign competitors matched it and the limit no longer served a security purpose.

How big is the commercial earth observation market?

Estimates put the sector near $5 billion in annual value as of 2024. Grand View Research projects roughly $7.24 billion by 2030, and Novaspace expects more than $8 billion by 2033. Forecasts vary widely because firms differ on whether to count raw imagery alone or include analytics and derived data products.

Why did commercial imagery matter in the war in Ukraine?

Private firms such as Maxar and Planet released timely imagery of troop movements and damage that journalists and analysts used openly. That broke the older assumption that only states held such pictures and raised governance questions about whether private operators should publish imagery affecting an active conflict.

What are the main privacy concerns with earth observation?

High-cadence constellations now revisit much of the planet daily, imaging people and property without consent. Radar systems can see through cloud and darkness, extending coverage further. Existing rules focus mostly on resolution and national security rather than individual privacy, leaving a recognized gap between current capability and the protections written into older governance instruments.

Appendix: Glossary of Key Terms

Remote Sensing Principles

The fifteen principles adopted by the United Nations in Resolution 41/65 in 1986. They establish norms for satellite imaging, including the right to observe any country and the sensed state’s access to data about its own territory, without binding legal force.

Outer Space Treaty

The foundational 1967 agreement governing activities in space. It makes each country internationally responsible for the space activities of its nationals and companies, which is why governments license private satellite operators based within their borders.

Shutter Control

A regulator’s authority to restrict an operator’s imaging, by limiting resolution, delaying delivery of certain scenes, or prohibiting collection over specified areas. Governments use it to protect national security or foreign policy interests during sensitive periods.

Copernicus

The European Union earth observation program, run with the European Space Agency. Its Sentinel satellites supply radar and optical imagery under a free and open data policy, distributed through cloud access to anyone without charge or licensing fees.

Landsat

A long-running United States imaging program operated by the Geological Survey and NASA. Its archive opened freely in 2008, and the next satellite, Landsat Next, is under development with a launch targeted for 2029.

Group on Earth Observations

A voluntary partnership of more than one hundred governments and many organizations that promotes open, interoperable earth observation data. It coordinates shared data systems and standards but holds no power to enforce rules on members.

Synthetic Aperture Radar

An imaging method that uses radar rather than visible light, allowing satellites to see through clouds and at night. Commercial operators sell radar imagery for monitoring tasks that optical cameras cannot perform in poor conditions.

Sensed State

The country whose territory is imaged by a satellite. Under the 1986 principles, this country is entitled to access data about its own land on non-discriminatory terms and at reasonable cost, even when another nation owns the satellite.