LAUSR

Abstract Data collection and information sharing are at the core of any traffic control system. In particular, Maritime Situational Awareness—restricted in this article to one of its main components, the automatic identification system (AIS)—and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) are the backbones of, respectively, maritime and space traffic control frameworks. While the AIS has been initiated by civil authorities for civil purposes and is now being adopted by navies around the world, SSA, originally developed by the military to protect national security assets in outer space is progressively transferred to civil actors. This article shows how and why the intrinsically different nature and history of maritime and space traffics generated a totally reverse approach towards information and responsibility sharing in support to traffic control, while presenting current proposals for the evolution of SSA.