Space Sustainability”: Legitimising extra-planetary exploration.

Abstract: 
At their 2025 Ministerial Council Meeting, ESA member states committed to the largest financial contributions in the agency’s history. This record has been related not only to security threats following the war in Ukraine, but also to what ESA’s General Director addressed as the world’s biggest challenge, i.e. climate change. His reasoning resonates with wider discourses on “space sustainability”, in which space is represented as a platform to address – and eventually solve – planetary problems. Against such a background, this presentation examines how narratives of planetary vulnerability, environmental monitoring, and technological salvation are articulated in the justifications for extra-planetary exploration. To do so, it relates two empirical sites: the German “city of space”, Bremen, and Esrange Space Center in Northern Sweden. 

Bio:  
Julia Lossau has been a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Bremen since 2012. Her areas of interest range from geopolitics and Anthropocene nature/cultures to issues of urban development, including infrastructure and public art. Julia Lossau is influenced by postcolonial theories and driven by a fascination with the ambivalences and contradictions of social life.