Of all the threats in space, it’s what the UN calls “a blurring of the line between civilian and military uses” that fires the imagination most. But there are other concerns: collisions between satellites, flight congestion, space debris hitting other spacecraft or falling to Earth, asteroids…
Viewed as a mass of problems, it may seem as though we’re “staring at a perceived wild tiger,” says Helen Tung, a space lawyer and lecturer based at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “It automatically engages our fear mechanisms,” she told DW.
But you get what you want, Tung added: If you want war, you do everything to get war. If you want peace, you do what you can to get peace.
“I don’t think we can say we want space development, that we want to engage more countries, we want peace and prosperity, and yet act contrary to that,” said Tung. “If the intention is there, there must be a way to say, ‘What can we do to move things forward?’ And I think it’s the private space sector which is going to push the legislation and states to change.”
And change they must. A significant set of space treaties and legal frameworks for space exploration, science and communication are stuck in the past.
Some countries, such as Luxembourg, have tried to circumnavigate global treaties by passing their own legislation to allow commercial companies to mine for minerals in space and keep the rewards. But with more states entering space, from India and the UAE to Nigeria, Luxembourg’s work around may not stand the test of time.
Space law designed for the Cold War
Time was when space was simple — a simple case of two states, the United States and the Soviet Union,(USSR) battling it out for supremacy — from the first dog and then the first person to orbit Earth (USSR) to landing and walking on the moon (US).
For a while, space was a game of just two players, with the rules laid out in a neat, four-page agreement, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. This is still a guiding framework for human activity in space, but it is out of step with the times.
“The Outer Space Treaty is quite basic. It prohibits the stationing of weapons of mass destruction in space; it says space should be used for peaceful purposes. And that’s kind of it. You could argue the bar is quite low,” says Juliana Süß, an associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
Now, said Süß in an interview with DW, “we’re not only in a security dynamic and environment in which there’s a whole host of different threats, a whole host of different actors, but we also have commercial players in the mix. One of them, SpaceX, with its Starlink constellation, owns [nearly 50% of active satellites in orbit]. So, the environment has changed. And we can’t argue that the legal requirements have been in step with that because we’re just lacking.”
When the US launched renewed ambitions to get to the moon, it set up the Artemis Accords in 2020 — an agreement, which the US controls, with countries around the world.
But even these accords are lacking, believes Malcolm Macdonald, a professor of satellite engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and president-elect of the UK’s Royal Aeronautical Society.
“The Artemis Accords are really just an agreement among already aligned countries that hope to set norms of behavior, meanwhile other countries do this by seeking to create realities,” wrote Macdonald in an email to DW.
He argues that the return to the moon, for example, is an attempt by China to create realities of behavior that suit them, and by US and others to do likewise.
“Until recently I had assumed that once the US realized China was looking like getting to the moon before the US returns there, the US would speed up what it’s doing. But it seems the current US government is not willing to hear this,” he said.
So, Artemis Accords or not, Macdonald thinks China will “do what it wants,” and it will be “even easier [for them] if they get to the moon first.”
Faced then with questions such as: Can diplomatic norms protect satellites or do treaties still work? Can voluntary diplomatic norms protect satellites, or how can we have established binding treaties? Or even the space arms race, can it be stopped? — it is perhaps understandable when Macdonald replies:
“One easy answer. Three times. No.”
Space security: What is the way forward?
The outlook is depressing but it needn’t be so.
Yes, Donald Trump declared space a military domain in his first term as US president and is now setting up a US Space Force.
And, yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has considered foreign commercial satellites legitimate targets in war since October 2022, soon after the invasion of Ukraine.
Even on day-to-day, routine space maintenance, there is “potential for miscalculation, misunderstanding, miscommunication,” thinks Süß, because Russia and China do not always share data, even on unintended satellite collisions.
According to the German expert, UN working groups on the prevention of an outer space arms race and transparency and confidence building in space activities have revealed that a lot of states have similar feelings and have similar motivations.
“So, talking about norms and behaviors is the way to go because when it comes to the treaties, people are going to pick apart things such as, ‘How do you define a space weapon?’ We’ve been stuck on that debate for decades, especially with dual-use technologies and robotics, and I don’t think we can solve it right now.”
Meanwhile, for the private sector it may mean introducing financial penalties for bad actors in space by involving new forms of insurance — it works in maritime law, said Tung: “That’s going to be a game changer when the private sector steps up and says, ‘If you do shoot this satellite, insurers will get involved, there’ll be an economic cost to this.”
Ultimately, or at least for now, “everything that we see happening in space,” said Süß, “is a reflection of how we act on Earth.”
Edited by: Uwe Hessler
