A Crash Course in Space Law

Laws have conquered land, sea, and air, and now, the final frontier. From tech billionaire rocket launches to satellite mega-constellations, space law is the final boundary awaiting its legal framework.

Simply put, space law is the intersection of legal agreements, principles, and treaties which govern human activities and missions in outer space. This includes space exploration and preservation, astronauts’ conduct, mission launches, and satellite operations.

The foundation of space law lies in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, signed by more than 100 countries, including the United Kingdom. The constitution is built on several principles, which include the non-appropriation of space bodies, thereby preventing a nation from claiming sovereignty over a celestial body, the freedom of exploration, liability for damage caused by the nation, its space objects, or non-governmental entities, and more.

Another treaty is the Rescue Agreement of 1968, wherein countries must come to the aid of astronautsin distress, a seemingly outer-space Good Samaritan agreement. Furthermore, an area of space law that can be likened to land law is the Registration Convention, whereby all spacecraft must be registered with the UN for efficiency in monitoring space activity.

The international treaties, and much of space law in general, are, as expected, truly scientific in nature. They focus on the advancement of human knowledge and the preservation of the environment.

Currently, key considerations and concerns in space law pertain to space traffic management and the use of resources. Space traffic is the result of spacecraft congestion, including satellites and debris. The detriments here lie in the risks of collisions, which threaten the long-term sustainability of space activities. Nevertheless, a unified international space traffic regulation system is yet to be developed.

An issue closer to home is the use of space resources. More specifically, mining on the moon is riddled with legal uncertainty, wherein rare earth elements such as Helium-3 are extracted from the moon. While some nations, such as the US, legally allow private companies to keep what they mine, some argue that this contrasts with the Moon Treaty, which identifies the moon as the ‘common heritage of all mankind’.

Student re-focus

Space law is full of legal uncertainty, but it is growing. A career ‘space lawyer’ does exist, though it is a highly specialised area wherein typical employment is with space agencies such as NASA or governments such as the UK Space Agency.

On a more commercial note, law firms do advise on commercial contracts, liability issues, and satellite regulation wherever applicable.

In conclusion, for a science that is growing at an exponential rate, we should expect the law to grow proportionally, although the last international development was over 40 years ago. Nevertheless, what is known is being regulated in a system slowly developing.

For instance, in the commercial sector, there are layers of government authorisation before a private company, such as SpaceX, can launch crafts into space. Space is sitting at the frontier of science, law and ethics, so we cannot help but ask, how much humanity can regulate about a place largely unknown to it?