Of all the threats in space, it’s what the UN calls ” the blurring of the lines between civilian and military use ” that most captures the imagination. But there are other concerns: collisions between satellites, flight disruptions, space debris hitting other spacecraft or falling to Earth, asteroids.
Seen as a major issue, it’s like we’re “staring down a perceived wild tiger,” said 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 more countries involved, that we want peace and prosperity, and yet act contrary to that,” Tung said. “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 that will push for legislation and make the case for change.”
And they must change. A series of significant space treaties and legal frameworks for space exploration, science, and communications are stuck in the past.
Some countries, like Luxembourg, have tried to circumvent the global agreement by passing their own laws to allow commercial companies to mine minerals in space and keep the rewards. But with more states entering space, from India and the UAE to Nigeria, Luxembourg’s work around this may not stand the test of time.
Time is when space is simple – a simple case of two states, the United States and the Soviet Union, (USSR) fighting it out for supremacy – from the first dog and then the first person to orbit the Earth (USSR) to landing and walking on the moon (US).
For a while, Space was a two-player game, with the rules laid out in a neat four-page agreement, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. It’s still the guiding framework for human activity in space, but it hasn’t kept up with the times.
“The Outer Space Treaty is pretty basic. It prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in outer space; it says space should be used for peaceful purposes. And that’s a good thing.
Now, Süß said in an interview with DW, “We’re not only in a dynamic security environment where there are a large number of different threats, a large number of different actors, but we also have commercial players in the mix. One of them, SpaceX, with the Starlink constellation, we don’t have the requirements that are built into it.
When the US launched a new ambition to get to the moon, it established the Artemis Accords in 2020 – a US-controlled agreement with countries around the world.
But even this agreement is still not enough, believes Malcolm MacDonald, a professor of satellite engineering at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, and president-elect of the Royal Aeronautical Society of Great Britain.
“The Artemis Accords are really just agreements among already aligned nations hoping to establish norms of behavior, while other nations do their part by trying to create reality,” MacDonald wrote in an email to DW.
He argues that the return to the moon, for example, is an attempt by China to create a behavioral reality that suits them, and by us and others to do the same.
“Until recently I assumed that once the US realized that China seemed to be getting to the moon before the US got back, the US would accelerate what it was doing. But it seems the current US administration doesn’t want to hear this,” he said.
So, Artemis Accords or not, MacDonald thinks China will “do what it wants,” and it will be “easier (for them) if they get to the moon first.”
Faced with questions like: Can diplomatic norms protect satellites, or do treaties still work? Can voluntary diplomatic norms protect satellites, or how can we establish binding treaties? Or even the space arms race—can it be stopped?—it’s perhaps understandable when MacDonald answers:
“One easy answer. Three times. NO .”
The view is sad but it doesn’t need to be.
Yes, Donald Trump declared Space a military domain in his first term as US president and is now establishing a US space force.
And, yes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has considered foreign commercial satellites legitimate targets in war since October 2022, immediately after the invasion of Ukraine.
Even in day-to-day, routine space maintenance, there is “potential for miscalculation, misunderstanding, miscommunication,” Süß thinks, because Russia and China do not always share data, even on unwanted satellite collisions.
According to German experts, the UN working group on preventing an outer space arms race and transparency and confidence in space activities has revealed that many countries share the same feelings and have the same motivations.
“So, talking about norms and behavior is the way to go because when it comes to treaties, people are going to pick on things like, ‘How do you define a space weapon?’ We’ve been stuck in that debate for decades, especially with dual-use technology and robotics, and I don’t think we can resolve it now.”
Meanwhile, for the private sector it might mean introducing financial penalties for bad actors in space by involving new forms of insurance – it’s working in maritime law, says Tung: “That would be a game changer when the private sector steps up and says, ‘If you do shoot down this satellite, the insurer will be involved, there will be an economic cost to this.’”
Ultimately, or at least for now, “everything we see happening in space,” Süß says, “is a reflection of how we act on Earth.”
Edited by: Uwe Hessler
