Laws Governing Outer Space and Interplanetary Activities in Our Solar System

For those of you interested in Outer Space - This article provides a brief overview of the current laws and regulations developed to date related to Outer Space, Inter-Planetary Exploration and Colonization, Mining Asteroids, Policing and Enforcement, Commercialization, Ownership and much more. As we gear up to become an Interplanetary species, we need to do a lot more thinking about these and the many other complex issues and challenges that may emerge over the coming century. Are you ready for  some of your grandchildren to be working in space?

Background & Definitions

The origins of ‘space law’ date all the way back to 1919, with international law recognizing each country's sovereignty over the airspace directly above their territory, later reinforced at the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation in 1944. The onset of domestic space programs during the Cold War propelled the official creation of initial international space policy by the International Council of Scientific Unions.

The Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, directly spurred the US Congress to pass the Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Because space exploration required crossing transnational boundaries, it was during this era where space law became a field independent from traditional aerospace law.

 

Since the Cold War, the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies”, commonly referred to as the "Outer Space Treaty", has served as the constitutional legal framework and provided a set of principles and procedures constituting current space law. Further, the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), along with its various subcommittees, are responsible for debating issues of international space law and policy. The UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) serves as the secretariat of the Committee and is promoting the policy of “Access to Space for All”.‎

Space law - The body of law governing space-related activities, encompassing both international and domestic agreements, rules, and principles. Key fields of law and domains of interest that need to be included within a comprehensive body of space law over the coming century include: commercial law, space colonization and governance, property and ownership laws, environmental law, mining, health care issues, liability and insurance, transportation, housing, labor laws, militarization and weapons in space, criminal law and law enforcement, ethics and much more. - See Wikipedia on Space Law

Key international treaties on Outer Space that have been negotiated and passed by COPUOS include:

• The 1963 “Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water”, called the "Partial Test Ban Treaty".
• The 1967 "Outer Space Treaty", the most widely adopted treaty agreed to by 104 nations.
• The 1968 “Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space”, referred to as the "Rescue Agreement".
• The 1972 “Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects”, commonly referred to as the "Liability Convention".
• The 1975 “Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space”, called the "Registration Convention".
• The 1979 “Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies”, referred to as the "Moon Treaty".

These key treaties and agreements of international space law cover "non-appropriation of outer space by any one country, arms control, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by space objects, the safety and rescue of spacecraft and astronauts, the prevention of harmful interference with space activities and the environment, the notification and registration of space activities, scientific investigation and the exploitation of natural resources in outer space and the settlement of disputes.”

In addition to the key treaties and agreements on international space law, the UN General Assembly has also adopted the following declarations and legal principles that are described in more detail at Wikipedia on Space Law. They include:

• The Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Uses of Outer Space (1963)
• Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (1979)
• The Principles Governing the Use by States of Artificial Earth Satellites for International Direct Television Broadcasting (1982)
• The Principles Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Outer Space (1986)
• The Principles Relevant to the Use of Nuclear Power Sources in Outer Space (1992)
• The Declaration on International Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for the Benefit and in the Interest of All States, Taking into Particular Account the Needs of Developing Countries (1996)

We are now on the threshold of moving from a Type 0 Civilization to a Type I Interplanetary Civilization. (See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale) Type 0 civilization extracts its energy, information, raw-materials from crude organic-based sources (i.e. food/wood/fossil fuel/books/oral tradition); pressures via natural disaster, natural selection, and societal collapse creates extreme risk of extinction; it's capable of orbital spaceflight; societies that fail to improve social, environmental and medical understanding concurrently with other advancements, frequently accelerated their own extinction. Type I civilization extracts its energy, information, and raw-materials from fusion power, hydrogen, and other "high-density" renewable-resources; is capable of interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary communication, megascale engineering, and interplanetary colonization, medical and technological singularity, planetary engineering, world government and trade, and stellar system-scale influence; but are still vulnerable to possible extinction.

Findings & Selected Articles

Some of the many other recent articles on Space Laws and Treaties that you might want to explore further include:

• What you need to know about the Laws of Space
• Who Owns the Moon? Law & Outer Space Treaties
• The Entrepreneur's Guide to Space Law

• NASA needs to update its rules on how to keep the Solar System clean

• How an international treaty signed 50 years ago became the Backbone for Space Law

• As Space Becomes a Busy Place, NASA Bolsters Its Planet Contamination Police

• We urgently need a legal framework for Space Colonisation and Governance

• President Obama signs U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act

• Planetary protection and Space Law - Space Legal Issues

• Outer Space Treaties Didn't Anticipate the Privatization of Space Travel

Conclusions & Next Steps

The following is a brief summary of some key conclusions, legal issues, and next steps with regards to our civilization’s move into Outer Space and and towards Interplanetary Exploration and Colonization.

• We are now on the threshold of moving from a Type 0: Earth-bound Civilization to a Type I: Interplanetary Civilization. (See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)
• In a National Geographic article, Elon Musk estimates that a million people could be living and working on Mars and in Outer Space by 2060. Do a quick Internet search on Jobs in Outer Space, you may be surprised by what you find.
• A more comprehensive body of space law will be needed over the coming century addressing: commercial law, space colonization & governance, property & ownership laws, liability & insurance, militarization & weapons in space, criminal law & law enforcement, environmental issues, mining, health care, housing, labor laws, transportation issues, ethics and so much more.

If you thought the rate of change was going to level off, forget it. I’ve already been preparing my grandkids for the prospect of working in the Space Industry – if not actually working off planet in the coming century. Think about it.

Selected Links

European Space Agency International Institute of Space Law National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Space Society (NSS) Space Law: SpaceLegalIssues.com UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) US Space Command and US Space Force

Outer Space: Overview of Current Activities and Future Plans

Once the domain of superpowers only, outer space activities now include an expanding set of nations whose numbers continue to grow. Although only 13 of approximately 70 governmental space agencies across the world have actual launch capabilities, many of the other nations are already participating in a wide array of space-related activities, For example:

• Many nations are now operating satellites in outer space performing a wide range of tasks.
• Over the years, an increasing number of nations have been sending astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
• With its Mars Orbiter Mission in 2014, India’s Space Research Organization (ISRO) enabled India to be the first nation to put a space probe in a Martian orbit on its first attempt.
• In 2014, the European Space Agency (ESA) probe Rosetta reached the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko and landed on its surface - the first such achievement in human history
• In 2015, the US sponsored Dawn, the first NASA spacecraft to explore the dwarf planets Vesta and Ceres, and provided the world with its first ever fly-by of Pluto and its moons.
• Japan is planning a mission to land-and-return to the asteroid Ryugu.
• The China National Space Administration is undertaking plans for a permanent manned presence in space similar to the International Space Station, and entrepreneurs plan for manned flights to Mars.

The European Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) is expected to reach full operational capability by 2020, significantly advancing global positioning capabilities - operating with greater precision, more global coverage, and at higher latitudes. Galileo will join the US GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou, and several other regional satellite systems being put in place by countries like India and Japan.

Private Sector Activities

As many governments struggle to fund their national Space Agencies programs, the private sector is now stepping up to fill the void and starting to pursue serious programs such as space tourism, asteroid mining, building next generation space craft, and developing space habitats for planned colonies on the moon and the planet Mars. Some of the major players include SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, China Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace, Planetary Resource, and other major spaceflight companies. However, full realization of return-on-investment by these companies are still decades away.

Think of numerous orbiting space stations, private sector manufacturing facilities in space, Interplanetary travel and supply networks, massive space-based solar energy arrays, and the initial colonization of Mars – that’s all becoming a reality.

Major Challenges

As the race for space accelerates, a number of major issues and challenges are emerging. For example:

• Space-faring nations—in particular the European Union (EU), China, Russia, India, Japan, and the US—need to further refine the existing Outer Space Treaty and agree on a code of conduct and a more detailed set of rules governing outer space activities.
• Space debris has become an immediate issue that must be addressed. More than 500,000 pieces of space debris are currently tracked as they orbit the Earth, some traveling as fast as 17,500 mph. Many millions of other pieces of space debris are too small to be tracked but could be hazardous to critical satellites or other spacecraft. International action is necessary to identify and fund the removal of debris most threatening to an expanding global space presence.

With more states and commercial firms stepping up their activities in outer space, existing international agreements and approaches need to be continuously revised and updated to avoid major challenges and potential conflicts down the road.

Militarizing Outer Space

Future conflicts and wars will be fought in multiple domains beyond traditional air, land, sea, and undersea domains. New battlefields will include computer networks, the electromagnetic spectrum, social media, the environment— and Outer Space.

In particular, the immense strategic and commercial value offered by outer space ensures that it will increasingly be an arena in which nations vie for access, use, and control of extraterrestrial assets and resources. At this stage, the militarization of outer space by aggressive nations and other entities may be inevitable.

The Outer Space Treaty and the SALT II treaty prohibit weapons of mass destruction from being placed in space. However, a variety of other weapons exist that would not violate these treaties. A Space Preservation Treaty has been proposed which would ban the placement of any weaponry in outer space.

Consider the following examples of planned activities and technologies by various nations related to the potential militarization of outer space. They include:

• Anti-satellite weapons have already been developed and tested by the US, Russia, and China.
• These nations are continuing to work on a variety of new space-based military weapons systems, e.g. advanced laser weapons, kinetic bombardment system, X-37B military spacecraft...
• The US Space Corps has been proposed as a new branch of the US Armed Forces, but has not approved of as yet.

Space-based Technologies

Heightened commercial interest in outer space and development of space-enabled technologies and services will improve efficiency and create new industrial applications with both civil and military purposes. For example:

• Low-altitude satellites will bring internet access to the two-thirds of the world’s population that do not currently have online connectivity to information, knowledge, and services many of us are now starting to take for granted.
• Satellite systems—smaller, smarter, and cheaper than in the past, e.g. CubeSat—will be bringing new capabilities in remote sensing, communications, environmental monitoring, and global positioning services that will benefit everyone on Earth.
• Space-based cloud services with much higher bandwidth will facilitate the development and deployment of global Health 4.0 systems, Education 4.0 solutions, Manufacturing 4.0, the Internet of Everything and...

Health 4.0 by 2050: By 2040, a space-based global artificial intelligence (AI) system and network of satellites will be put in place that will monitor and help provide healthcare to people on Earth and in colonies across our solar system on the Moon, Mars, and other locations. The system will be linked to massive global health data warehouses storing data from a wide range of health IT systems, e.g. Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, Personal Health Records (PHR), Health Information Exchange (HIE) networks, wearable fitness trackers, implantable medical devices, clinical imaging systems, genomic databases and biorepositories, surgical robots, health research knowledge-bases and much more.

Also, think about the Earth’s planetary defense systems and technologies that are planned and already starting to be put into place, not to mention space-based solar energy power plants.

Transition to Type 1 Civilization

The bottom line is that the Earth is in the process of completing the transition from a Type 0 to a Type 1 Civilization. Billions of people caught up in the massive changes taking place around the world, have never heard about this and don’t yet comprehend what is happening. Outer Space and Space-based Technologies play a key role in this transition.

A Type 0 Civilization extracts its energy, information, raw-materials from crude organic-based sources (e.g. wood/fossil fuel); information is communicated by books, newspapers, oral tradition; natural and man-made disasters coupled with societal conflicts create extreme risk of extinction; it's capable of orbital spaceflight; limited medical and technological advancement; failure to improve social and environmental conditions often lead to their own extinction. A Type I Civilization extracts its energy and raw-materials from fusion power, hydrogen, solar, and other renewable resources; able to utilize and store energy available from its neighboring star, i.e. the sun; capable of inter-planetary spaceflight, colonization, and communication within its solar system; mega-scale global engineering and trade; regional and world governments; digital access to all known information and knowledge; achieves medical and technological singularity; still vulnerable to possible extinction. * See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Finally, as spaceflight technologies take a major leap forward allowing for Inter-Planetary travel, millions of humans will make up the first wave of immigrants populating permanent colonies on other planets and moons in our Solar System. Large scale geoengineering construction in support of these steadily growing colonies will begin. Public and private sector organizations will aggressively moving forward to further explore and exploit resources on nearby planets, moons, and asteroids in outer-space well into the 22^nd century when we will start the transition to a barely imaginable Type 2 Civilization, when plans for the first unmanned journeys to potentially habitable planets in the nearest solar systems of our Galaxy will be executed.

What an amazing journey lies ahead for future generations!

Selected Links European Space Agency (ESA) Future of Space Exploration – Video National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) NIC Report: Global Trends 2035 Preliminary High Level Predictions for Life in the Year 2100 Outer Space Treaty - Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space

Manned Inter-Planetary Space Travel Now Becoming a Reality

It appears manned inter-planetary space travel within our solar system is now becoming a reality. The world has been sending unmanned spacecraft and space probes to other planets and bodies within our solar system for several decades. This doesn't mean I may live to see it, but my kids and grandkids will.

You know its going to happen as the list of countries with space programs continues to grow, e.g. U.S., Europe, Russia, China, India, Japan... Meanwhile, numerous private companies are also pushing and shoving to get into the race to conquer space, e.g. SpaceX, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Google, Northrop...

* See Manned Spacecraft versus Unmanned Spacecraft Missions

Reading the latest NASA news briefs, we know that they are developing the most advanced rocket and spacecraft ever designed for the manned Mission to Mars, planned for sometime before the end of the next decade. Read more about NASA's Orion spacecraft that will carry four astronauts and provide an entirely new national capability for human exploration beyond Earth's orbit.

Just this past week, the BBC reported that the European Space Agency is actively discussing building a village on the moon. China is also actively moving forward with their lunar exploration program. Russia, India, and others are also planning other ventures that are sure to be unveiled in the near future.

As I've written before, we are currently in the process of transitioning from a Type 0 Civilization to a Type 1 Civilization. Some of the characteristics of a Type 1 Civilization include the capability of interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary communication, and interplanetary colonization. For more detail, on the future of civilations, read Redefining Our Purpose as Civilization Keeps Evolving

Again, the race is now on to launch manned inter-planetary space missions and begin the first phase of a long process to colonize the planets in our Solar System. There's going to be some exciting times ahead for our children and grandchildren.

The planets of our Solar System currently include: The terrestrial planets include: Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars The giant planets include: Jupiter and Saturn (gas giants); Uranus and Neptune (ice giants) Dwarf planets include: Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris

* For more on Space Exploration, visit Wikipedia or do your own more extensive search on the Internet. You might also want to read some of the latest news articles on Human Spaceflight at Space.com

Open Source Space Satellites Launched

This news story in NewScientist by Lisa Grossman caught the attention of a lot of people this week – "Space station poised to launch open-source satellites". Known as CubeSats, these open source mini -satellites were launched into space this week aboard a Japanese resupply vehicle heading to the International Space Station (ISS). This citizen-science project was partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign.

Paying customers will be able to program controls on the satellites and run experiments for three days for $125, or for $250 per week. The open source CubeSats run Arduino, an open source computer hardware and software platform popular with science hobbyists. Five years out, the project team expects to see hundreds of these satellites deployed in space.

Students of Sara Seager at MIT helped design and build CubeSats for planetary science.  "This definitely is helping open up space both to all people and all nations," Seager says of the Ardusat launch.

This is all kind of amazing to me – and to the rapidly growing open source global community. What's next? Open source space vehicles heading around the moon and off to Mars? 
BTW - how much would a large commercial company have charged for a similar solution? $50 million? $100 million? Interesting to speculate about.

Open source has come a long way over the past decade.  What other spectacular new innovative uses of open source platforms do you see coming down the road?