Whose Space Is It?

Governments have been exploring space for a while, but the influx of private players has altered the rules of the game. What are the laws that govern space today?

- Keith Gottschalk

WHEN WE THINK of space players, we think of state and regional space agencies, such as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the European Space Agency (ESA). But the world has changed since the cold war decades of the last century. In 2015, governments spent the US $76.7 billion in space—which was just over one-fifth of all such expenditure. Four-fifths of the space economy is in the hands of private corporations. These include “old space” such as Airbus and Boeing, and “new space” such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origins. In China, a generation of new private space companies grows alongside the Chinese National Space Agency. In India, ISRO has a parastatal as its commercial wing—Antrix. Now the ball is in the court of famous conglomerates such as Tata, Mahindra, and others, to diversify into satellites and space launchers.

Today we have six decades of developing an acquis of international space law. TheInternational Institute of Space Law was founded in 1960. Universities such as Leiden in the Netherlands and McGill in the US have schools of air and space law.

Space law builds on aviation law, the law of the high seas, and the Antarctic Treaty. The foundational Outer Space Treaty of 1967 has been signed and ratified by 108 states. Its principles include that all nations may participate in space exploration. It prohibits annexing the moon or other celestial bodies, building military fortresses on them, and stationing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in space or on the moon.

The treaty defines astronauts as envoys of all humanity. Provisions of this treaty were elaborated by a series of later treaties. The Rescue Agreement of 1968 obliges all countries to rescue stranded astronauts and return them to their home country. So far, astronauts whose flights have been aborted all landed within their own country.