2.0 - Space Law
Specific guidelines on the definition of airspace have yet to be universally determined.
“Space law is the body of law governing space-related activities, encompassing both international and domestic agreements, rules, and principles. Parameters of space law include space exploration, liability for damage, weapons use, rescue efforts, environmental preservation, information sharing, new technologies, and ethics. Other fields of law, such as administrative law, intellectual property law, arms control law, insurance law, environmental law, criminal law, and commercial law, are also integrated within space law.”
Because space exploration requires crossing transnational boundaries, space law has become a field independent from traditional aerospace law. Numerous national space agencies and other organizations such as the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) have debated issues of international space law and policy. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) serves as the secretariat of the COPUOS and is promoting Access to Space for All through a wide range of conferences and capacity-building programs.
Challenges that space law will continue to face in the future are fourfold
1. spanning across dimensions of domestic compliance
2. international cooperation
3. ethics
4. and the advent of scientific innovations
2.1 Space law defeated
Under the 1967 "Outer Space Treaty", which governs international space law, no one nation can claim sovereignty over a body in space. But there could be a loophole.
The treaty does not explicitly prevent private companies
from claiming territory. The 1979 "Moon Treaty" which specifically
bans any nation from asserting sovereignty over any part of the moon and
prohibits ownership by private persons has never been ratified by the major
space fairing nations including the
The “L5 Society “which was founded to promote the space exploration thoughts of Gerard K. O'Neill (an American physicist) was at its’ height of influence when it successfully defeated of the Moon Treaty in the U.S. Senate in 1980
L5 Society activists campaigned for awareness of the
provisions against any form of sovereignty or private property in outer space
that would make space colonization impossible and the provisions against any
alteration of the environment of any celestial body prohibiting terraforming.
Leigh Ratiner (a
If there is no internationally agreed definition of sovereign airspace and no ratified treaty on celestial ownership and sovereignty then it would seem that the first person to land on and claim a planet becomes the rightful owner with all sovereign rights.
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