NATO leaders have expanded their mutual defence clause to include a collective response to attacks in space.
A statement said attacks "from, or within space" could be a challenge that threatens "national and Euro-Atlantic prosperity, security and stability, and could be as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack".
Article 5 of the military alliance's treaty states that an attack on any one of the 30 allies would be considered an attack on them all.
Until now, it has only applied to attacks on land, sea, air or cyberspace.
The statement following their Brussels summit said attacks in space could lead to the invocation of Article 5, but a decision as to when such attacks would warrant a response would be "taken by the North Atlantic Council on a case-by-case basis".
Around 2,000 satellites orbit Earth, over half operated by NATO countries, ensuring the functioning of everything from mobile phone and banking services to weather forecasts.
Military commanders also use some of them to navigate, communicate, share intelligence and detect missile launches.
Shortly after arriving at the alliance's headquarters for the first NATO summit of his presidency, Joe Biden sat down with Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and reaffirmed the US commitment to Article 5.
Mr Biden said: "Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation. I want NATO to know America is there."
The past four years saw Donald Trump call the alliance "obsolete" and complain that it allowed for "freeloading" countries to spend less on military defence at the expense of the US.
Many member countries are concerned about what they say is increasingly aggressive behaviour in space by China and Russia.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said NATO does not want to "descend into a new Cold War" with China.
Speaking ahead of the summit, the prime minister said the East Asian nation had become a "new strategic consideration" for NATO but he also said there would be "opportunities" to engage.
"I don't think anybody around the table today wants to descend into a new Cold War with China," he told a news conference.
His comments echoed those by NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who said the alliance would need to "engage" with China on issues including climate change and arms control.
"China's military build-up, growing influence and coercive behaviour poses some challenges to our security," Mr Stoltenberg said.
However, he also said "we are not entering a new Cold War" and China is "not our adversary, not our enemy" - although it has become a "systemic" challenge to Western security.
On Sunday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said China would "feature in the (NATO) communique in a more robust way than we've ever seen before" as the alliance begins to look more seriously at any potential threat from the country.
NATO is also taking a stronger line on Russia, with Mr Stoltenberg saying their relationship is "at its lowest point since the end of the Cold War".
Mr Johnson said he remained "hopeful" things could improve with Russia but the situation was currently "pretty disappointing" from a UK point of view.
Over the weekend, Russian President Vladimir Putin told NBC News that the relationship between his country and the US was at its "lowest point in recent years".
It comes ahead of a meeting between Joe Biden and Mr Putin on Wednesday, which will take place after the US president has met with NATO leaders.
Mr Biden previously said the US was "not seeking conflict with Russia" and wanted a "stable and predictable relationship".
However, he said America would "respond in a robust and meaningful way if the Russian government engages in harmful activities".
Analysis: Getting tough with Beijing and Moscow as Biden's impact is felt
By Deborah Haynes, foreign affairs editor
The toughest language yet on China, calling out Russia over its nuclear arsenal and a pledge for the first time to make tackling climate change a security priority.
The NATO alliance set out an increasingly diverse array of dangers and priorities in a hefty communique that betrayed the brevity of what was in reality a half-day summit of leaders in Brussels.
Spread across 79 paragraphs - covering nuclear, cyber and even space threats as well as the need to embrace emerging technologies like artificial intelligence - the plan is far more ambitious than anything attempted when Donald Trump was in the White House.
It provides evidence of how the new president is enabling NATO to return to focusing on external threats and the need to adapt instead of worrying about its own survival - a concern that was at times speculated during the four years of the previous US administration.
Mr Trump, who was never a fan of multilateral organisations and in particular NATO, spent much of his time berating allies for failing to pay their fair share towards collective defence (he had a good point) and even threatening to pull the US out of the club.
It meant getting through a summit without an unmanageable disaster was deemed a success.
And yet, the Trump approach did at least prompt many allies, in particular Germany, to boost their efforts to edge towards the NATO spending target of 2% of national income.
This time around though, the alliance once again has a fan in charge of its most important member state.
President Joe Biden has made clear his commitment to NATO and the importance he places on the alliance for collective security.
He also knows that he needs all the allies he can muster to deal with what he sees as the challenge of his time - tackling the rise of authoritarianism led by China, which does not respect the same values as the world's democracies.
The NATO communique said: "China's stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to alliance security."
It flags up Beijing's "coercive policies" and how it is "rapidly expanding its nuclear arsenal with more warheads and a larger number of sophisticated delivery systems to establish a nuclear triad".
There is also concern about China's cooperation with NATO's old rival - Russia.
It is important to remember that China only featured in a NATO communique for the first time in December 2019.
Yet the ruling Communist Party is not considered such a problem for allies to agree unanimously that it is a security threat - a conclusion certain member states may perhaps disagree with.
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2021-06-14 16:56:08Z
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