The Perseverance rover landing on Mars is still fresh in our minds, private companies are putting people and supplies into orbit, and NASA continues to work on “the most powerful rocket” it has ever built. But as world governments and private corporations continue to look into the skies for opportunities, a SXSW panel called “Who on Earth Should Rule Space” makes it clear that the laws pertaining to space are not evolving as quickly as technology. that takes us there.
“People like to think of space as the Wild West – nothing beyond, there is an open border, we can do whatever we want,” said Michelle Hanlon, president of For All Moonkind, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving it. humanity’s cultural heritage in space. “Unfortunately or fortunately that is not true at all.”
Hanlon was referring to the Outer Space Treaty, which was developed in 1966 and ratified by more than 60 countries in early 1967. Given that the treaty went into effect two full years before mankind landed on the moon, it’s no surprise that the document is burdensome. on broad principles, but light on details. One of the biggest hits: Space will be free for exploration and use by all states, states must avoid harmful contamination of space, celestial bodies will only be used for peaceful purposes, and perhaps more importantly, the claim that space is not subjugated to claims of sovereignty by governments bound to Earth.
The treaty has come a long way in enshrining a set of lofty values that dictate how we approach and use space, but things have changed dramatically over the past 54 years. “We’re looking at this moment in human history where we think, ‘Oh, we want to do so much in space, but we can’t own anything,’” Hanlon said. “So we really have to think about how we’re going to see properties in space, mining rights in space.”
The idea of mining asteroids and other celestial objects for their resources seemed to peak in the mid-2010s, when companies like Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources regularly made headlines. (By 2016, the latter had managed to raise a cool $ 50 million in funding for their space mining efforts, including investments from former Google CEO Larry Page and former Alphabet / Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt Today, however, enthusiasm has waned somewhat. Dr. John Junkins, interim president of Texas A&M University, said in the panel that mining “and materials processing in space will someday take place” and that a legal framework was needed to enable these activities.
“The moon is a huge resource, and it will most likely be mined before the asteroids are,” he added.
Defining those property rights and frameworks is one thing, and it will take a while before they can be fully completed. Enforcing those rights – and rights defined by the Outer Space Treaty – is a separate question, and one that has not been fully addressed despite incidents that should justify it.
Junkins reminded viewers of a day in 2007 when China destroyed one of its defunct weather satellites with a missile, leaving a dangerous cloud of debris with hard-to-track orbits. A deliberate act like this seems to run counter to the OST’s stance on ‘contamination’ of space, but China has never faced serious repercussions for what Junkins called a ‘monumental space crime’.
Strictly speaking, however, China isn’t alone: the United States and Russia have their share of debris drifting into orbit, with Dr. Junkins suggests that 40 percent of space junk by mass belonged to the now-defunct Soviet Union. That leads to a tricky liability issue, which Caryn Schenewerk, VP Regulatory and Government Affairs at Relativity Space, believes will not be addressed until there is a catalytic moment that compels the issue.
“Launching something into space doesn’t give up ownership,” she said. “And when you leave it in space, when you leave it, you don’t give up ownership of it. So it’s an interesting issue … you maintain the liability aspect of it, which, incidentally, is not strict liability in space; it is only strict liability on earth. So in space you actually have to prove who is to blame and then fight it out among yourselves. And good luck to really prove who made a mistake in space! We will get better at that, if we have to, but we really need an impulse for this. “
Attempts have been made to more fully codify a set of rules to govern the way we approach space, including most recently the Artemis Accords signed by the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, Ukraine , the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates in 2020. Ten countries are a start, but a slew of key space states – including China, India and Russia – have not joined the largely US-designed accord. It is difficult to say what (and possibly) will be needed before the international community agrees to a comprehensive set of guidelines for the use of space. But one thing is clear: with the technology to get us into space and keep us getting more advanced by the day, these are issues we can’t afford to keep punting.