Imagine you’re traveling in another country, trying to meet up with friends or family. But everyone has a different map, in a different language, and none of the landmarks seem to match. It’s easy to see how that might leave all parties confused.
That’s more or less the situation in outer space right now. And as RAND’s Jordan Logue explains in this new video, the stakes in space are obviously much higher than they are for any vacation here on Earth.
As humans venture farther into space—whether by guiding tourists on cruises around the moon or launching telescopes into deep space—there is a growing need for clear terms and definitions to describe different regions of the cosmos.
A new RAND study by Logue and colleagues aims to fill this gap. The authors outline four distinct astrographic regions: surface environment, near-body space, celestial neighborhood, and deep space. Their framework can help foster discussion among space professionals about how to map the final frontier in a practical and meaningful way. That, in turn, could improve decisionmaking as policymakers balance technological advancements with safety.
