Who owns outer space?

Helen Sharman: I saw the Earth for the first time as the fairing was jettisoned during the launch. So still with probably about three G, something like that, pushing me down and back into the seat. The fairing is jettisoned and immediately light streams through this window.

And there was the Pacific Ocean, with sort of white clouds and black, black space above.

Host: That’s Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut in space, describing the moments after she had burst through earth’s atmosphere aboard a Soyuz TM-12 spacecraft in 1991.

Depending on how you measure it, Helen is one of only about 680 people, and only 70 or so women, to have ever been into space.

With more companies getting into space exploration and the cost of launching rockets dropping, could we see a lot more people heading into space in the future? What kind of possibilities does this new space age bring—and what dangers should we be worried about?

Welcome to LSE iQ, the podcast where we ask social scientists and other experts to answer one intelligent question. I’m Maayan Arad from the iQ team where we work with academics to bring you their latest research and ideas, and talk to people affected by the issues we explore.

In this episode I’ll be asking, ‘Who owns outer space?’

We’ll hear about mining on the moon, how a loose screw in space could cost lives, and whatever happened to that flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon fifty five years ago.

In 1989, Helen was a food chemist for Mars Wrigley Confectionery in Slough. She heard a radio advert for job as an astronaut, which stated "no experience necessary". So she applied, never thinking she would actually be successful.

Helen Sharman: Oh, well, I didn't think I would ever be an astronaut until all of a sudden there was the opportunity. Nobody from this country had ever gone into space. As far as I was concerned you had to be military, a pilot, Russian or American. But of course, you know, times changed. So, all the sudden, there was a new space mission. President Gorbachev had decided to open up his space program to the west. And, there was this space mission for the first British astronaut. First criterion was that you had to have some sort of stem, education, and I'd studied chemistry. I was a scientist in UK industry, and, Yeah, I just thought I'd give it a go. Never once expecting that I would get chosen...

The motivation really, if I'm honest, was not so much about flying into space. But I was thinking about the training because I've always liked, I suppose, a variety of things in life.

If you think about astronaut training, for me, I got to live in the Soviet Union. Wow. You know, the Iron Curtain kind of stuff. It felt very exotic.

But to learn to speak the Russian language fluently enough to use it in space, and all the training was to be done in the Russian language, the physical training that was going to be part of the training itself. And just living there and being part of that Russian culture, the art galleries, the theaters, the concerts.

Host: Helen’s flight – at the very tail end of the Cold War - was part of the Soviet-British Project Juno mission to the Mir space station. Its aim was to strengthen relations between what was then the USSR and the UK setting in motion a more collaborative era of space exploration.

I interviewed Helen alongside Dr Jill Stewart, an expert in the politics, ethics and law of outer space exploration and exploitation, from LSE’s Department of Government.

Host: What is it that you think that drives humanity to explore space?

Helen Sharman: Ooh, that's a big one.

Jill Stuart: It is. Yeah.

Helen Sharman: We're always curious about where did we come from in particular? And where are we going, in the long term future? There's always been this idea about, you know, comets, and, and what we now know is supernova. We see them in history, we see them in religious texts. They're clearly significant. And even before we understood them, we started to sort of try and put meaning to them.

But right now I mean it's economy, right. So we absolutely know there's a huge economy and World Economic Forum estimated it's going to be what is it, $1.8 trillion by 2035 I believe.

Jill Stuart: You know, this human imperative to explore that we hear about and those are very much the sort of noble purposes, science and, also contributing to our technology through developing technology for space. But then the feedback loop that it has on what we can do on Earth. But there are also these other elements, such as the economy, which is definitely an increasingly a driving force behind it.

There also always has been a political subtext to a lot of our activities since we've been able to access space.

There is this international demonstration of power, but then there's domestic prestige. And, you know, I'm not knocking the idea of it being used for propaganda. And I think it's a nice way for a country to demonstrate things like technology that potentially has a military subtext, but in a peaceful way, which I think is why it was widely used during the Cold War.

Host: In 1957, the US was taken by surprise by the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit earth. It was both a technological and propaganda coup for the USSR and kicked off the space race between the two nations. The US responded by creating NASA – which ultimately led to the Americans landing on the moon.

Dr Dimitrios Stroikos is Head of the Space Policy Programme at LSE IDEAs, LSE’s foreign policy think tank. He says that the majority of human activity in space today is perhaps more mundane in comparison but absolutely essential for many functions that we rely on on earth.

Dimitrios Stroikos: Intuitively, when we talk about space and especially the politics of space, we think about space exploration, colonisation of other planets, exploiting the moon, asteroids and so on. But we tend to forget the extent to which space today it's so much, interwoven with, so much embedded and integral to our daily lives, from the role of space technology in space, space based assets, to communicates, transportation.

Think about, navigation satellite systems. GPS is a good example of how we use it. And we depend every day on the space economy. It’s also integral to the broader economy, financial transactions depend on space technology, the role that space research plays into dealing with urgent challenges such as climate change. And then space is also very important as a force multiplier. That is the role that space plays in enhancing, military capabilities on Earth. So when we talk about space exploration, generally we tend to forget that, well, generally the bulk of space activities, it is with a reference to space to earth.

Host: Today, most human activity in space happens in the earth’s atmosphere. In fact, human’s have not left earth’s orbit since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission to the moon.

But the possibilities of space, such as living on other planets or mining asteroids for materials like precious metals and minerals continue to drive our fascination with space. How close are we really to achieving this?

Dimitrios Stroikos: There’s definitely hype. There is definitely interesting about exploring lunar resources for example, mining the asteroid. I think we're not yet there. But there is a big question about how we still have the technology to take advantage and to exploit lunar resources, for example, or to, establish settlements on the moon or the Mars.

It might be possible, but it's also keeping in mind that those, projections have been there since the beginning of the space age, back in the 50s and in the 60s. There was the expectation that, like today, we would already be traveling from one planet to another and so on. So Space, in this regard, captures public imagination.

Host: Private companies, including SpaceX or Blue Origin have invested billions of dollars in their space programs. I asked Jill and Helen how they see the influence of commercial companies evolving.

Helen Sharman: We’ve had commercial companies involved in space, for eons. They've pretty much always been there, but they've been as contractors. So the agencies have really controlled, who has been doing what and what they've been doing. I think the difference is now that the agencies are buying services, and then other customers could also come to those companies, and buy similar services.

So the companies are, gaining a huge amount of capability themselves. And nation states are losing that control over what is done in space. I think that's where it's, it's really starting to change and getting very exciting as well as, possibly too risky.

Jill Stuart: As Helen said, commercial space activity has been around since the 1970s. And in the 1980s, for example, in the United States, Reagan was really pushing research and development to the private sector as part of the, you know, ethos of capitalism. So space commercialization is certainly not something new. In reading Helen's biography, I was surprised to learn that your mission was partly funded through private corporations, I believe.

Helen Sharman: well, it was, but it was more we we're thinking about sort of soft diplomacy. And there was, President Gorbachev. It was it was the end of the Cold War. And he was trying to reach out to a number of Western countries and replicate an Interkosmos programme that had been run by the Soviet Union and the Soviet Space Agency with, let's say, Soviet friendly countries, a lot of them from Eastern Europe, but others as well.

And so we were reaching out to Britain, to France, to Germany, to Austria and so on to try and, get, get other countries involved. So, yes, the idea was that my mission would be, was was part of that. But actually the British government at the time had a policy of not funding human spaceflight. It was all about small satellites, Earth observation, and couldn't change the policy quickly enough. But Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, pally with Gorbachev and wanted my mission to go ahead. A company was set up to manage the mission, and the idea was to gain commercial sponsors, but financially it was not a success. I mean, some sponsorship was raised, but not enough. Eventually there was a new, and a new agreement made with the Soviet space Agency, and I flew Soviet experiments. So it was much more of a kind of a collaborative mission. So really mine was a hybrid, I suppose.

Jill Stuart: I think we tend to think of space activity as being this dichotomy between private and public, but in reality there's a lot of overlap. So even these private companies like SpaceX are being largely funded by the US government. So it's a lot messier than we think of it.

the big difference we do have is this dramatic increase in the number of commercial, entities that are going into space, a huge jump that's partly due to the costs coming down and also the shrinking of the size of things like satellite. So we're we're just putting up a lot more.

Helen Sharman: Even startups can send satellites into space now. So yeah.

Jill Stuart: And universities. That the cost has come has come way down, which is is

interesting and is creating sort of the democratization of space, but also potentially the overcrowding of it.

Host: While private companies being in space is nothing new, the impact they’re having there isincreasing. Jill explains the implications this has for how space is governed.

Jill Stuart: with regards to international law. Everything that goes into space still technically belongs to what we call the launching state. So according to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which was the first treaty that was established to govern outer space, outer space is neutral territory. But every object that's up there is sort of a small piece of, of the sovereign territory that comes underneath it. That becomes interesting when you have commercial entities, because they're not countries, but every country has to take responsibility for every object that is up there. So it's registered through the United Nations. Some of this has to do with a slightly less interesting topic of insurance. So there's liability implications for everything that's up there. If they cause damage in space, then technically it's the country that has taken responsibility for it.

It's a chain of liability that could potentially get really complicated. And we do track a lot of the debris, so we do know what a lot of the debris where it has come from. The thing is, the treaty hasn't been tested that many times. There was a case in the 1990s where a very expensive French satellite communications satellite was destroyed by a free floating screw.

Kinetic nature of space, something like a screw that can destroy a satellite. And so they were very angry about this, and they traced the screw back to another French satellite. So that kind of meant that the treaty wasn't invoked.

These days, everything that's up there will have insurance so we can trace the liability chain, but it would probably be the insurance company that would be paying out on it. But this idea of the debris cloud is something that's really worrying people.

Host: In the opening scene of the blockbuster movie Gravity, George Clooney and Sandra Bullock play astronauts who are hit by a wave of high-speed space junk. This destroys everything in its wake, in turn creating more debris - something known as ‘the Kessler syndrome’. Here’s Dimitrios:

Dimitrios Stroikos: The problem with space debris, according to some experts is that there is so much debris already that we're reaching a turning point known as the Kessler syndrome, or collisional cascading.

In this regard, the density of object due to space debris is high enough that, collisions between objects could cause a cascade in which collisions generate space debris, which in turn increases the likelihood of further collisions.

The distribution of debris in orbit can render space activities, and the use of satellites difficult, given that in certain orbits, space debris can stay in orbit for many years. This can also mean losing access to space for many generations and returning to the space age without global positioning systems, weather satellites, space-based communications and satellite internet, to name a few prominent space technology applications on which our modern societies depend on.

Host: I don’t want to ruin the movie for you if you haven’t seen it – but it doesn’t end well. And this isn’t just science fiction. Jill and Helen say space debris can have life-threatening consequences.

Helen Sharman: Recently, the Russians did something with a satellite that created a load of debris. And actually that debris, there was in direct track of the International Space Station. So they put not only their own astronauts, but also, other astronauts at risk. You know, astronauts and others will say it is only a matter of time before somebody actually dies in the space. And it will probably not be because of, you know, a rocket exploding during launch. And it probably won't be because of something happening a bit like we had the Columbia spacecraft that broke up, when it returned to Earth. It's likely to be because of debris.

Jill Stuart: I agree.

Host: With space becoming ever more crowded, the stakes have never been higher to ensure that it’s governed properly. Otherwise, essential technology and people’s lives could be at risk.

Helen Sharman: Are there any closer to getting like an the equivalent to what we have in air traffic management on the Earth?

Jill Stuart: We have been tracking debris for a long time. There are a lot of different universities around the world, for example, that are helping to track it. The European Space Agency plays a role in helping to maintain databases that are looking at everything that's up there, from flecks of paint to dead satellites to a glove that was dropped by an

Astronaut.So there are different agencies like the United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs, like NATO, that are, coordinating these activities. But there's a lot to be seen as to what we can achieve and how successful it is.

Host: New systems are clearly needed for new problems. But are the original principles which govern space, still fit for purpose many decades after they came into effect? Dimitrios outlines the Outer Space Treaty which provides the basic framework on international space law.

Dimitrios Stroikos: Space cannot be appropriated by any state, so national sovereignty cannot be extended for example, on the moon and other planets.

The Outer Space Treaty also banned weapons of mass destruction in space, including nuclear weapons, but it also allowed the use of other weapons, such as, for example, anti-satellite weapons.

Also the Outer Space Treaty bans, the establishment of military bases on the moon and other planets. It highlights the importance of freedom in space. It has a very strong, inclusive tone. That space belongs to humankind for example. And of course, those sort of principles, were untested until today. Many of those principles are now under pressure because of the commercialization and the privatization of space.

There is not a consensus about what can be permitted and not in terms of exploiting, for example, lunar resources. So there is the need to set a more clear framework about those commercial activities today

So in some ways, the outer space treaty played a very important role. We shouldn't forget that no conflict has taken place in space yet. And that's quite remarkable. But on the other hand, given advances in space technology, the growing commercialisation and privatization of space, what can be called a space race now for lunar resources on the moon and potentially on Mars or on asteroids, it seems that the outer space is rather outdated.

Host: There are four other key international treaties that govern space activities. The Liability Convention holds countries responsible for any damage caused by their space objects. The Registration Convention requires states to register all space objects they launch with the United Nations for accountability. The Rescue Agreement mandates countries to assist astronauts or space objects in distress. And lastly, the Moon Agreement.

Dimitrios Stroikos: There was also an effort, to set a framework about how to exploit lunar resources, but most of the, great powers of the day didn't sign the treaty because part of these provisions, highlight the importance of equitable access to those resources. And essentially, the Moon treaty is a failed treaty in this regard.

Host: What are countries doing now? Are they getting together to try to come up with some sort of a framework, or does that conversation not exist at all at this stage?

Dimitrios Stroikos: One of the latest efforts was within the United Nations. There was an open ended working group to set, responsible norms of responsible behavior in space.

This lasted for a few years, but in the end, no consensus was reached. This effort was largely affected also by the war in Ukraine, in the sense that, Russia derailed the whole process in the end. So in many ways, you're seeing the geopolitical tensions interfering with these efforts.

Host: The US, Russia and China all have plans to return to the moon to explore its potential within the next decade, so this points to a real need for international agreement on how we use it. It’s not just the impact that mining might have on the moon itself that should concern us. The danger is that human activity in space exacerbates rising inequalities here on earth.

With the amount of investment going on into mining, and the depletion that we expect of Earth resources and the geopolitics that's going on that makes certain parts of the world more difficult to acquire some of these things from. So, yeah, I think we have, gold, platinum, cobalt, palladium and iron, should we want it. We might choose to use a lot of these in space. But then the question is, would we bring them back to Earth and use on Earth as well? So we've got this to two way at the moment. It's probably, a matter of a decade or so before we're going to be seeing, these resources actually brought back to Earth. And I think that's kind of wow, in some respects is suddenly, let's say platinum becomes perhaps not quite the financial resources that's going to upset world markets, but also, let's say it’s cobalt. I mean, we know that there are certain countries in the world where there's huge resources of cobolt there. Their whole GDP is based on cobalt mining. If we're then bringing back loads of cobalt from space, we're upsetting that balancea, and where these countries can gain their economies from. And then that makes me wonder if they're not able at the moment to invest in space, as many of them are not, are we just going to perpetuate the haves and the have nots? So I would like us to bring on board these countries and collaborate with them in a way that enables them to invest, if not financially, to invest in other ways so that they're in it from the beginning. Yeah. Which will hopefully then start to support their economies. So we don't get into this situation where we are with CO2 and we're talking about, well, ‘fine for the Western countries because you put all your carbon into the atmosphere and then you made your economies because of that and now we're not allowed to do the same’. Let's not repeat that.

Jill Stuart: I think in the shorter term, the idea of bringing resources back to Earth is going to be more expensive than the value that we could get from it. I think that’s in the future.

One of the interesting elements is the use, the mining and use of resources in situ. So on the moon, for example, mining helium or water in order to support crewed missions there and extend missions further into the universe. This raises interesting legal questions because technically no nation state may lay any claim to any sort of celestial territory, so I think we will end up trying to find a way to unpack that legislation.

But I also agree with this idea of the exaggeration of inequality. And there have been conversations going on about that since the 1970s, when some of the developing countries came together as a voting bloc within the United Nations to try and argue that they were potentially going to be shut out of the benefits of space activity because they were, they didn't have a first mover advantage. They weren't able to access it in the first place. And there were some minor developments that came out of that. For example, the preallocation of certain orbital slots for developing countries. I think it's important that that continues to be discussed in terms of technology build, technology transfer, responsible technology transfer and capacity building by space capable countries to less space capable countries.

Host: Humans have long dreamed of returning to the moon and voyaging beyond to other planets – new frontiers. Rather than the nationalism and competing political ideologies that drove the first space race, the new space age is as much about money, as it is about scientific discovery and national glory. Against the growing democratisation of space, can any nation or company really lay claim to any part of it, or its rich possibilities?

Jill Stuart: International law has been very clear about ownership since the 1950s, and the 1960s. And it essentially says that outer space is neutral territory. No country may lay claim to any celestial territory. The reason that this came about is interesting. The Soviet Union had a different perspective than the United States. The Soviet Union wanted to extend airspace so that there would actually be ownership in space, whereas the United States preferred what we call the high seas analogy. We already had the high seas legal infrastructure in place for a long time, where everything would be neutral territory. The reason for this was that the United States had a stronger interest in being able to spy on the Soviet Union from space, since it was a more closed society. And so they came together through the United Nations in the late 1950s to discuss what we would put in place for outer space as human activity in space became increasingly likely to be imminent. And they agreed on the model of it being neutral through the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. The reason for that was partly political, because the Soviet Union had become increasingly tense in their relations with China, which was also a very close society, so they had developed an interest in being able to spy from space as well. So it has very nice sort of noble language about space being for the common heritage of all mankind. But there's actually a political background that at least partly informed that. So when you're in space, when an object is in space, it maintains sort of the sovereignty, the responsibility of the launching country. Astronauts in space, are technically the envoys of all mankind according to, space law, the 1968 rescue agreement.

Host: The United States flag that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted on the moon in 1969 represented the fact that the US had won the so-called Space Race. But neither they, nor any other nation, could lay claim to any part of the moon. As Jill explains:

Jill Stuart: There was actually a committee that was designed specifically to look at the symbolic elements that would accompany the first Apollo mission to the moon, because they were aware of the impact that it would have globally. There were discussions about potentially carrying, for example, the United Nations flag instead, or a flag that had multiple countries represented on it, but it was decided to take an American flag.

This was a little bit last minute. They actually dispatched some of the secretaries from NASA to go buy a flag from a department store nearby, and they think it cost like $4.67.

They decided to go with the U.S. flag and it was unfurled and it was placed there. It was followed by a further five flags from all of the other Apollo missions that landed there. So there's six American flags on the moon. They, NASA has acknowledged that they are probably bleached white at this point, and they may well have been tipped over as the landers were exiting the surface, but they are still there.

The Clangers, which is a children's British animation cartoon type program, they had an episode planned where an astronaut would land on the moon and they didn't know who was going to get there first. So in that episode, the flag that the that the astronaut carries has both the Soviet Union and the United States represented on it.

Host: I asked Helen how her eight days orbiting earth shaped her views on the concept of ownership and territorial claims in space.

Helen Sharman: There's a lovely quote by the first Saudi astronaut, Sultan bin Salman Al Saud. He said: ‘The first day or so, we pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day, we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.’

It's that whole idea that you don't, though those whole, nation state things just dwindle because we're sharing, an atmosphere , we’re sharing the technology that we absolutely need to survive.

It is nice to not feel connected to the earth because, you know, you are feeling weightless, you don't feel as if you're so physically bound. You're pulled down to it. We know we are because we're in orbit. But, you know, we don't feel that. And so that disconnection and seeing that grand view, you know, we did discuss- wouldn't it be nice if, you know, you could just wipe the slate clean? What, how would we reorganize Earth? Clearly, we need to divide it up somehow because we can't just manage it has one. But wouldn't it be so great if we could… And yet, of course, pragmatically, we know that we are where we are, as they say, and where we are, is how we are investing in space. So yeah, I'd love us to be able to, to rise above at least some of that.

Jill Stuart: Literally rise above.

Host: This episode was produced by me Maayan Arad with help from Anna Bevan, Sophie Mallet and Sue Windebank. If you’d like to find out more about the research in this episode, head to the show note notes. And if you enjoy iQ, please leave us a review.

If you want to hear more from Helen Sharman you can catch her hosting the Zero Pressure podcast. It looks at how science and technology can positively contribute to solving complex, interrelated global challenges of today and tomorrow.

We’ll be taking a break for December and will be back in the New Year when Joanna Bale will be asking ‘Why are our rivers and beaches polluted by sewage?’

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