The “Space Side” to “Harmful Interference”—Evaluating Regulatory Instruments in Addressing Interference Issues in the Context of Satellite Communications

Interference issues in the context of satellite communications can, in principle, be tackled with legal means from a variety of angles, due to the multifaceted character of both interference and satellite communications as a sector. From that perspective, the present contribution addresses the most important regulatory instruments available to address the particular aspects of satellite communications related to their usage of outer space, and represents a first summary effort to evaluate their particular scope, approach, and general effectiveness

TWO NEW NATIONAL SPACE LAWS: RUSSIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

Increasing private participation in space activities is one of the most farreaching developments relevant for international space law today. The most comprehensive consequence of such private participation in a legal sense is in fact the necessity to establish a national space legislation of some kind, in view of the international obligations arising under responsibility and liability for the state relative to the consequences of these private activities. The rather recent addition in 1993 of two states, the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Africa, to the previously existing number of three states (the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom) in possession of national space legislation is therefore clear proof of the aforementioned development. The paper will try to provide a summary description of the two pieces of national space legislation from the perspective of international space law. After a short introduction to the domestic circumstances in which the legislations have been established, analysis will focus therefore on the manner in which the two national space laws actually operate in elaboration of international responsibility and international liability for space activities. Reference will be had in this respect primarily to the respective scope of the two laws, both with regard to the activities concerned and with regard to the entities concerned. Furthermore, with an eye to the three older national space laws, the measure of inclusion or absence of a licensing system, with related problems of derogation of liability and insurance obligations, will be discussed. Also, the extent to which a few fundamental obligations found in the international space treaties, such as those related to peaceful uses of space and environmental issues, are reflected in the two laws will be evaluated. By means of the resulting conclusions, a summary evaluation may be made of the two respective national space laws, and the way in which they deal with the general problem of containing the risks inherent in private involvement in space activities by juridical means, that is by binding private entities to theinternational obligations of space law

TWO NEW NATIONAL SPACE LAWS: RUSSIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

Increasing private participation in space activities is one of the most farreaching developments relevant for international space law today. The most comprehensive consequence of such private participation in a legal sense is in fact the necessity to establish a national space legislation of some kind, in view of the international obligations arising under responsibility and liability for the state relative to the consequences of these private activities. The rather recent addition in 1993 of two states, the Russian Federation and the Republic of South Africa, to the previously existing number of three states (the United States, Sweden and the United Kingdom) in possession of national space legislation is therefore clear proof of the aforementioned development. The paper will try to provide a summary description of the two pieces of national space legislation from the perspective of international space law. After a short introduction to the domestic circumstances in which the legislations have been established, analysis will focus therefore on the manner in which the two national space laws actually operate in elaboration of international responsibility and international liability for space activities. Reference will be had in this respect primarily to the respective scope of the two laws, both with regard to the activities concerned and with regard to the entities concerned. Furthermore, with an eye to the three older national space laws, the measure of inclusion or absence of a licensing system, with related problems of derogation of liability and insurance obligations, will be discussed. Also, the extent to which a few fundamental obligations found in the international space treaties, such as those related to peaceful uses of space and environmental issues, are reflected in the two laws will be evaluated. By means of the resulting conclusions, a summary evaluation may be made of the two respective national space laws, and the way in which they deal with the general problem of containing the risks inherent in private involvement in space activities by juridical means, that is by binding private entities to theinternational obligations of space law

Space for Tourism? Legal Aspects of Private Spaceflight for Tourist Purposes

It is barely five years ago since the first space tourist proper, Mr. Dennis Tito, made his much-publicised 20 million-dollar flight to the ISS. And now, purportedly thousands of prospective customers are lining up with such nascent companies as Sir Richard Branson\u27s Virgin Galactic, for a 200,000-dollar, few-minute flight into the nearest part of outer space. In other words: it looks like space tourism is here to stay. This obviously raises a number of key legal issues, stretching from proper application of such international space treaties as the Liability and Registration Conventions to national legal issues pertaining to liabilities, licensing and certification, and civil and criminal jurisdiction and control. The present paper seeks to offer an overview of some of these, the most salient legal issues as they are on the table right now, keeping in mind the need to maintain a fair balance between the interests of private enterprise and of the public at large - nationally as well as internationally - respectively

Crossing a Rubycon? The International Legal Framework for ISOs—Before and After Privatization

The present chapter analyzes the activities of international satellite organizations (ISOs), former ISOs, and private satellite operators from the perspective of the four principal international space law treaties, consisting of the Outer Space Treaty, the Rescue and Return Agreement, the Liability Convention, and the Registration Convention. In addition, it considers a United Nations Resolution dealing specifically with Direct Broadcasting by Satellite, as it is one of the major categories of activities that international satellite organizations such as INTELSAT and EUTELSAT have traditionally undertaken, as well as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), which oversees the international regime developed to deal with frequency issues. Analysis here will not deal with the general substance of these agreements, but only with the specifics they may provide for dealing with ISOs, as opposed to sovereign states, and ISOs now under private ownership. In particular, it will focus on the extent to which the transition from ISOs to supervisory IGOs-cum-private operators marks a watershed. While politically and economically this transition has often been characterized as a kind of “crossing of the Rubycon,” the question remains whether legally speaking that would be true as well

The Second African National Space Law: The Nigerian NASRDA Act and the Draft Regulations on Licensing and Supervision

The number of countries with more or less comprehensive national space legislation addressing in particular the authorization and supervision of private space activities continues to grow, and several more countries are currently in the process of adding themselves to that list. One of the more recent and most interesting ones among them is Nigeria, as the second African country after South Africa and—after Brazil—the second leading spacefaring nation from the developing world, to draft, further to a fairly recently established succinct framework law, a set of regulations addressing precisely those issues. The paper briefly recaps the underlying international obligations, in particular as following from Articles VI, VII, and VIII of the Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention, and the Registration Convention, Nigeria being a party to all three. It then proceeds to analyze the 2010 National Space Research and Development Agency Act and the 2015 draft Regulations on the Licensing and Supervision of Space Activities from the above perspective. It will compare the Nigerian legislation as needed or helpful with other national space laws already pronounced on those issues, and in doing so will take Nigeria’s role as leading African nation in outer space in this respect into consideration. This will finally allow for some conclusions as to the contribution to the further development of (international and national) space law represented by these Nigerian legislative efforts

The Second African National Space Law: The Nigerian NASRDA Act and the Draft Regulations on Licensing and Supervision

The number of countries with more or less comprehensive national space legislation addressing in particular the authorization and supervision of private space activities continues to grow, and several more countries are currently in the process of adding themselves to that list. One of the more recent and most interesting ones among them is Nigeria, as the second African country after South Africa and—after Brazil—the second leading spacefaring nation from the developing world, to draft, further to a fairly recently established succinct framework law, a set of regulations addressing precisely those issues. The paper briefly recaps the underlying international obligations, in particular as following from Articles VI, VII, and VIII of the Outer Space Treaty, the Liability Convention, and the Registration Convention, Nigeria being a party to all three. It then proceeds to analyze the 2010 National Space Research and Development Agency Act and the 2015 draft Regulations on the Licensing and Supervision of Space Activities from the above perspective. It will compare the Nigerian legislation as needed or helpful with other national space laws already pronounced on those issues, and in doing so will take Nigeria’s role as leading African nation in outer space in this respect into consideration. This will finally allow for some conclusions as to the contribution to the further development of (international and national) space law represented by these Nigerian legislative efforts

Too-Close Encounters of the Third Party Kind: Will the Liability Convention Stand the Test of the Cosmos 2251-Iridium 33 Collision?

Cynics would say: space lawyers must have been waiting for this for decades, and now will of course immediately call for additional regulation. But indeed, the recent collision between the Cosmos 2251 and the Iridium 33 satellite, the first time since the Cosmos 954 disintegrated over Canada that the Liability Convention stands a chance of officially being invoked, raises a number of issues regarding the applicability of that Convention, and the level of precision with which it can be applied. The present paper undertakes a critical analysis of some of these issues. Notably, this concerns the involvement of a commercial satellite run by a private operator in the collision (the Liability Convention providing for a very much state-oriented liability regime), the issue of \u27fault\u27 as determinative of the level of liability of the two principal states involved in the collision, and the concept of \u27space debris\u27 - as Cosmos 2251 was apparently non-operational and out of control for more than thirteen years - and what to do with it legally, in terms of liability as well as otherwise. In view of the gradually growing population of outer space with manmade artefacts the Cosmos 2251-Iridium 33 unfortunately but very likely will not be the last too-close encounter of this third-party kind. And cynics or not, lawyers will have to address the extent to which the current space law regime may need elaboration and refinement to deal with such incidents in the optimal fashion

Effective Exercise of ‘In-Space Jurisdiction’: The US Approach and the Problems It Is Facing

As mankind moves closer to the fiftieth anniversary of the conclusion of the Outer Space Treaty, the framework international treaty laying down the baseline regime for space activities, it may be considered a major achievement that the treaty, as well as some of its offspring—notably the Rescue Agreement, Liability Convention, and Registration Convention—seem to be as relevant as ever. This is a major feat in an international era of many fundamental changes in the geopolitical, economic, and social context. Nevertheless, the increasing involvement of private entities in many fields of space activity beyond the (by now) more “traditional” ones of satellite communications and to lesser extents launching and satellite remote sensing, has given rise to many new legal issues, even questions about the continuing validity and appropriateness of the broad regime resulting from the above-mentioned treaties. Nowhere is this probably more true than in the case of the United States, the world’s leading space-faring nation in particular also in the context of extended private participation in activities in outer space. In the United States, various serious commercial enterprises are eying the possibilities of exploiting the mineral resources of asteroids or other celestial bodies. Also in the United States, the various companies that are close to selling tickets to outer space to the rich, famous, and a few others are converging—even if Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic originally was a British company, and SXC, planning to launch from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao, was a Dutch company before its merger with XCOR. Except for satellite communications and a few isolated examples in launching and remote sensing operations, all private operators with advanced plans for, or actually ongoing, space operations are US or US-led companies. This also means that the development of legal tools within the United States to properly handle such new private endeavors should be of great interest to the rest of the world as well. Indeed, various non-US countries and other interested parties in this realm are closely following the developments within the United States in this regard. One important aspect thereof concerns the use of national legislative and regulatory instruments to address international responsibility and liability of the United States under the treaties for the activities of such private entities in outer space or in an outer-space-context, further to Articles VI and VII of the Outer Space Treaty. At the same time, the United States turns out to present a rather unusual picture from the perspective of domestic implementation of international obligations under the space treaties and domestically specifying the agencies exercising jurisdiction for the purpose. It does not have a single national framework space act from which all further detailed regulations follow (which is essentially what all other countries with dedicated national space laws have availed themselves of), but a set of separate, to some extent even disparate national acts handling different aspects and elements. While historically understandable, and so far not having raised major legal problems, this is rapidly changing now under the pressure of such new developments as sketched above. For that reason, this article addresses the US approach to handling its international obligations under the space treaties specifically vis-à-vis private actors, the issues arising from that approach and the discussions currently gearing up to try and handle those issues more profoundly, comprehensively and, in a sense, logically. In short: how does and should, the United States arrange for the exercise of domestic jurisdiction over any relevant space or space-related operations by private actors, in line with applicable international law and, more precisely, in line with relevant clauses of the Outer Space Treaty and the Registration Convention

Passing the Buck to Rogers: International Liability Issues in Private Spaceflight

One of the most exciting recent developments in outer space, especially from a legal standpoint, is the advent of space tourism. Within the legal issues surrounding that development, liability is of prime importance. Liability is, of course, always about passing the buck, or, more precisely, about who should pay compensation for damage caused by the activities concerned. At both the international level and in the field of space law, however, a large measure of confusion has often arisen as to the scope, meaning, and consequences of liability. This confusion is partly the consequence of liability\u27s intricate relationship to the concept of [state] responsibility, where Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty has applied this concept to the specific context of outer space and space activities. Further confusion results from the fact that liability itself is a concept and a term used in numerous national as well as international legal regimes, but may have different interpretations and applications in the separate contexts. Thus, space law liability, especially of the international brand, which is the core subject of this Article, depends upon a specific legal regime, the boundaries of which will depend on questions such as: where does liability apply, who is a potential claimant, who is potentially liable, what type of liability is provided, how will compensation be distributed, etc