New Space Industries Seen Creating Regulatory, Treaty Obligation Questions
The U.S. is seemingly on the path to clarifying its outer space treaty regulatory obligations for emerging, nontraditional space activities, but a host of other obligations the U.S. has under OST are waiting and need more specificity, too, said speakers at a University of Nebraska space law conference Friday. Speakers said the federal government needs to make clear which agency is "the front door" to all the various other agencies with a hand in reviewing such nontraditional space activities.
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The FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, with its payload review, well fits the bill of that lead agency, said Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) Chairman Mike Gold: "No. New. Regulators. We don't need any of that."
The 2017 American Space Commerce Free Enterprise Act (ASCFEA) -- passed by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee in June -- would give regulatory oversight of emerging space industries largely to the Commerce Department Office of Space Commerce (see 1706210043). Planetary Resources General Counsel Brian Israel said parts of the bill are "terrible" in that they freeze out other agencies with applicable expertise, like the State Department on international obligations. It also has too-narrow views of U.S. international obligations, he said.
The Senate is working on companion legislation that likely will be more far-reaching than ASCFEA, and likely will be released later this year, Gold said. That Senate bill could go a long way toward clarifying U.S. obligations and its approach to OST Article VI -- requiring governmental regulation of nongovernmental activities in space -- which has long needed clarification, he said. Article VI was a topic of Senate Space, Science and Competitiveness Subcommittee hearings earlier this year (see 1705230038). Whatever policies the U.S. pursues have to be seen as having credibility and legitimacy internationally, since other nations will be looking closely at whatever framework the U.S. enacts, Israel said.
Some pushed the idea of industry-created standards as a legitimate means of compliance with Article VI obligations. OST is flexible enough that industry standards could fill that role, but "writing standards is hard" and without some external motivator like looming government regulation, "it might not happen for a long time," said George Nield, FAA associate administrator-commercial space transportation
Having spearheaded the OST with the Soviet Union, the U.S. today has no clear understanding of its next 50 years of space policy, said Defense Department former deputy assistant secretary-space policy Doug Loverro. The Trump administration, having resurrected the National Space Council, has a mechanism for figuring out the future rule set that it then can advocate for internationally, he said.
That rule set should include abandoning the idea of banning anti-satellite technology as unrealistic, instead banning kinetic anti-satellite tech that could create debris fields, Loverro said. U.S. policy should focus on international agreements of what are acceptable anti-satellite actions -- with attacks on positioning, navigation and timing infrastructure like GPS satellites being unacceptable -- and on proposing space traffic and mineral and ownership rules. “If the U.S. leads, I guarantee people would sign on,” Loverro said.