On 12 June 2026, a company went public at more than two trillion dollars, the largest listing ever seen, and its founder became the first trillionaire in history. The market had just put a price on something unprecedented: control over a major share of low Earth orbit, that ring of space which, under international law, belongs to no one. Low Earth orbit now has a de facto owner. The question is who allowed it.
1 The coronation
It begins with a number that defies comprehension.
The largest listing in history
Two trillion for a space empire
On 12 June 2026, SpaceX joined the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX. Seventy-five billion dollars raised, more than two trillion in value on day one, the stock up 19%. It is the largest IPO ever, and Elon Musk becomes the first trillionaire. It is not Starlink alone that is listed, but all of SpaceX, of which Starlink is nonetheless the engine, around 61% of 2025 revenue.
Day-one valuation
> $2 tn
6th-largest US company (Nasdaq, CNN, 12 June 2026).
Starlink's share
≈ 61%
of SpaceX revenue in 2025 ($11.4bn of $18.7bn).
The price of the kingdom
In listing SpaceX, the market is not valuing rockets alone. It is putting a price on a position: that of a private actor controlling access to orbit and operating the majority of its satellites. A historical first: command of a common domain, priced in dollars.
2 Two thirds of the sky
Before it is a valuation, it is a physical dominance.
The scale
One actor, two thirds of active satellites
On 17 March 2026, Starlink passed ten thousand active satellites. Of roughly fifteen thousand active satellites around the Earth, nearly two thirds are its own. SpaceX carried out 94% of US launches in 2025 and places around 75% of all the mass humanity puts into orbit. No actor, public or private, has ever come close to such concentration.
Starlink satellites
10,000+
active since March 2026, 12 million subscribers, 160+ countries.
Mass put in orbit
≈ 75%
of everything humanity launched in 2025 (University of Cambridge study).
More than the East India Company
A Cambridge study (June 2026) measures it: this 75% share exceeds that of the East India Company at its peak, around 72% of Europe-Asia tonnage. “Space is becoming an economic frontier governed by one or two corporations, just as the world's oceans once were.”
3 A masterless asset
The paradox is first a legal one.
The law
The province of all mankind
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, ratified by more than a hundred states, holds that space is “the province of all mankind” and that it “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” In law, orbit belongs to no one, and can belong to no one.
The loophole
①
It binds only states. It reaches companies only indirectly, through the licence and supervision of their country (Article VI).
②
You don't own, you occupy. The ban targets appropriation by states. A company that fills orbit with its satellites “owns” nothing in law, but captures its use. Saturation stands in for ownership.
③
First come, first served. The ITU coordinates spectrum on this principle, which rewards whoever files early and deploys fast. The law of the commons collides with the race to occupy.
Saturate rather than own
Here is the sleight of hand. What the law forbids to nations, companies obtain otherwise: not by the flag, but by sheer numbers. The commons is not annexed, it is saturated, which amounts to the same thing.
4 The kingdom without a crown
A dominant position becomes a power, then a de facto sovereignty.
Private sovereignty
Infrastructure power without a counterweight
Whoever holds orbit holds connectivity, and therefore a critical infrastructure: armies, hospitals, emergency services, markets. In Ukraine, Starlink became vital, and the decisions of a single man weighed on the course of a war. In 2022, coverage was not activated over Crimea during a Ukrainian attack, a debated episode; in 2025, access even served as leverage in a negotiation between states. A “switch” in private hands.
A kingdom, not a state
①
De facto rules. With no global governance, the operator sets its own traffic and safety standards.
②
Geopolitical leverage. Cutting or degrading the service is to weigh on nations, answerable to no one.
③
The East India Company, only faster. Like the chartered companies of old, a private actor administers a frontier without authority. “Reining in the East India Company took two centuries. Space does not have that long.”
No crown, real power
A kingdom without a crown, then: the power of a sovereign, without the coronation or the accountability. And a dilemma for Washington: reining in SpaceX would slow America in its race against China. No one has a real incentive to do it.
5 The lesson of the poles
Yet humanity has already refused, once, to carve up a frontier.
The precedent
When Antarctica was spared the carve-up
In the early twentieth century, the race to the poles was the last great division of territory, claimed by conquest and the flag. Then, in 1959, twelve nations signed the Antarctic Treaty: it froze all territorial claims, demilitarised the continent and made it a commons devoted to science. Eight years later, the Outer Space Treaty drew directly on it. As early as 1960, President Eisenhower had proposed extending Antarctica's principles to space.
The forgotten lesson
Humanity has already chosen, once, the commons over appropriation. Today's question is simple: have we forgotten the lesson of Antarctica at the very moment a new frontier opens, and where it is private actors, not states, who are drawing its borders?
6 The tragedy in orbit
The kingdom rests on ground that could give way.
The crowded commons
The tragedy of the commons, above our heads
Low Earth orbit is a shared and finite resource. Every satellite launched crowds the space everyone shares, and the debris it might create is a cost passed on to those who follow, an externality no one pays. The European Space Agency (2025) counts more than 1.2 million fragments larger than a centimetre and warns that the current path exceeds “the threshold of sustainability.” The dread has a name: the Kessler syndrome, those chain collisions that could render an orbit unusable.
Avoidance manoeuvres
144,404
by Starlink in six months (Dec 2024 to May 2025), up 200%.
Capacity at risk
−50 to 66%
of low-orbit capacity by 2100 (Nature study, 2025).
SpaceX is in fact lowering 4,400 of its satellites in 2026 to reduce the risk, after a debris incident in December 2025. And economics is clear: cleaning up is not enough. An orbital-use fee, a tax on congestion, could quadruple the sector's value over time (Rao and others, PNAS 2020), where debris-removal technology alone fails. Yet no such fee exists to date.
Fill to serve, crowd to reign
The snake bites its tail: the more an actor fills orbit to provide the service, the more it endangers the commons it depends on, and the more indispensable it becomes. Dominance and fragility grow together.
7 The multipolar sky
And meanwhile, others want their share of the sky.
The race
The sky fragments into blocs
Starlink's dominance breeds its rivals. Amazon, with its Leo constellation (formerly Kuiper), is deploying late. Europe, trailing, is betting on IRIS² for around 2030. And China is accelerating: its Guowang and Qianfan constellations target nearly 28,000 satellites, and at the end of 2025 Beijing filed with the ITU for nearly 200,000 satellites, a way to reserve the slots before they fill.
The logic of the race
①
First come, first served. Slots and frequencies are reserved by seniority; the race rewards speed, not merit.
②
A finite resource. Low Earth orbit can hold, it is estimated, only a few tens of thousands of useful satellites. The scarcity is real.
③
The end of the commons. The United States now rejects the very idea of a space “commons”; the sky risks splitting into rival blocs, American and Chinese.
A celestial enclosure
What we are watching is not an orderly sharing but an enclosure: the fencing-off of a commons by those who can file early and deploy fast. China's filing for nearly 200,000 satellites is not a construction plan, it is a regulatory land grab.
8 Three scenarios
It remains to be seen how this new division of the world closes.
The future's division
From the common rule to enclosure
Nothing is settled. The sky may become a governed asset again, or freeze into private and national domains. It all depends on political will, the pace of collisions, and the moment chosen to act.
Three trajectories
①
The orbit treaty. Governance catches up: traffic rules, debris liability, a use fee, even an “Antarctica of orbit.” Humanity replays 1959.
②
The congestion crisis. A Kessler-type event, a major collision, forces the hand and imposes rules in urgency and loss.
③
The multipolar enclosure. The status quo hardens: orbit is divided de facto between a dominant private actor and rival national blocs, with no commons.
The compass
For the investor: a valuation above two trillion rests on a very real near-monopoly, but also on an unpriced systemic risk, debris, carried on the whole sector's books. For the citizen: a commons is closing above our heads while we were looking elsewhere. The real question is not whether orbit has an owner, but who we want that owner to be.
Reference: abbreviations & acronyms used (LEO, ITU, FCC).