Tag: Outer Space Treaty

The US Coast Guard’s Future is in Outer Space

Article by Michael Sinclair                                    October 15, 2020                                    (brookings.edu)

• The Coast Guard serves as the United States’ Arctic governance presence. This requires of the Coast Guard the ability to communicate ‘over-the-horizon’. In December 2018, teamed up with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Division and SpaceX to launch two small cube satellites (“cubesats”) — Yukon and Kodiak — over the Arctic as part of the ‘Polar Scout program’. While the Coast Guard lost its communications link to the satellites shortly after their launch, the fact that the service looked to space to meet its mission objective is a forerunner of things to come.

• These two cubesats were intended to serve as the vanguard of enhanced telecommunications coverage in the Arctic. As the warming climate melts the ice at the north pole, this increases the international shipping access by the US, Russia and China. This increases the strategic significance of the Arctic, and the need for increased governance.

• The second great Space Age will be turbo-charged by computer processing and commercial space markets. The Coast Guard should take advantage of the increasingly affordable access to space that commercial space opportunities provide. Space-based surveillance can assist with many Coast Guard missions including maritime law/drug enforcement, intelligence, buoy tending, vessel traffic management, and icebreaking. Coast Guard icebreaker vessels should serve as ocean station sentinels. And the Coast Guard should add additional satellite link stations such as the one in New London, Connecticut.

• Next, the Coast Guard should develop a ‘Space Operations Strategic Outlook’ to establish space competencies across the entire Coast Guard. The 2019 Coast Guard Authorization Act includes statutory language that would extend Coast Guard ‘Captain of the Port Authority’ beyond its twelve nautical-mile limit to facilitate safe and secure space operation support at sea. The Coast Guard should partner with Space Force to provide space ‘search and rescue’.

• Government, military and commercial space entities fully intend a rapid increase in human space flight. Space Force should have the capability to render assistance to distressed space farers. This is consistent with the Outer Space Treaty and the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, both to which the United States is party. Currently, there is no specific statute authorizing a US agency to conduct such rescue operations in space. The Coast Guard’s broad search and rescue would provide excellent models for developing a foundation for the Coast Guard assist with Space Force/Space Command in space-based search and rescue operations.

• On their face, “outer space” and the “Coast Guard” are two terms that do not seem to have much in common. But with the ready access to space in the 21st century, now is the time for the Coast Guard to consider how to alter its planning to capitalize on the opportunities and to meet future challenges in space.

 

In December 2018, the U.S. Coast Guard joined the space faring community. It teamed up with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Division and SpaceX to execute the launch of two small cube satellites (“cubesats”) — Yukon and Kodiak — as part of the Polar Scout program.

These two cubesats were intended to serve as the vanguard of enhanced telecommunications coverage in the Arctic, a domain that has always been important but is of increasing strategic significance today because it is at the intersection of great power competition and global climate change. In short, a warmer climate results in greater access; greater access results in greater maritime traffic, including by Russia and China. The Chinese, in particular, are constantly pressing to exploit resources the world over, be it living marine or hydrocarbon-based. Likewise, greater traffic means more need for increased governance presence to ensure safe, rules-based operations within the Arctic.

The Coast Guard is statutorily charged with serving as the United States’ Arctic governance presence. This means the Coast Guard increasingly requires the ability to communicate over-the-horizon — thus, Polar Scout. And while the Coast Guard lost linkage to Yukon and Kodiak shortly after launch, the mere fact that the service had the vision to go boldly to the heavens to meet that need should be a forerunner of things to come.

THE KEY QUESTIONS

Space issues are a hot topic in 2020. Indeed, we are at the start of a second great space age, one that is shaping up to be turbo-charged by the commercial market and the seemingly never-ending, exponentially increasing power of computer processing. The United States is pursuing the Artemis Accords, the Space Force is getting off the ground, NASA is looking towards Mars (but first to the moon! To stay!), and commercial space pursuits are booming. The Coast Guard has already gotten in the game, but it must continue to seriously consider space as it develops budgets and strategies for the future.

To succeed as an information-age military service and total-domain governance agency in the 21st century, the Coast Guard should view space through three lenses. First, how can the service best capitalize on cheap, ready access to space to facilitate its missions, as it had already started to do so with the Polar Scout launches? Second, how do commercial space efforts interact with the maritime industry and maritime domain; and to what extent, if any, does the Coast Guard need to adjust or modify its extensive suite of operating authorities and regulations to ensure that any risk to the safety and security of the maritime is adequately addressed? And third, how can the Coast Guard, as part of the joint force, assist the Space Force in executing the latter’s own responsibilities?

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Artemis Accords Are a First Step to a Space NATO & Future Star Fleet

Below is my video blog on the Artemis Accords signed on October 13 between the United State and seven allied nations with national space programs: Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom. While the language is designed to fit into the provisions of the Outer Space Treaty ratified by UN member nations in 1967, these are bilateral accords with the US, and the UN is merely a place where the accords are placed for international recognition. 
The Artemis Accords contain mutual defense provisions if any nations experience harmful interference in their explorations of the Moon, Mars, asteroids and minor planets. This is first step towards a Space NATO, and eventually a future Star Fleet.
The choice of Artemis as the name for the accords is also very significant symbolically given what has been happening in space in terms of space weapons, false flag events, galactic slave trade, etc., by major nations such as China and rogue secret space programs. Artemis was the Goddess of the forest, hunt, Moon, and righteous behavior. The hidden intent of the Artemis Accords is to clean up these rogue space programs, ensure ethical behavior in space, and to rein in Communist China, which plans to become the undisputed hegemon on Earth and in  Space.
Michael Salla, Ph.D.
 

Space Law and the Galactic Economy

Article by Abdulla Abu Wasel                               June 8, 2020                            (entrepreneur.com)

• Fifty years ago, outer space was reserved for the most powerful of nations and the most dominant of governments. Today, it is private commercial industry that is inching us closer to the cosmos. There is a growing interdependence between what is happening in space and what is happening down below on Earth. The commercial space industry, with its multi-million-dollar rockets and satellites, is now worth about $400 billion. Space commerce is increasingly playing a part in our everyday lives.

• The International Civil Aviation Organization governs ‘air’ altitudes. So where does ‘space’ begin? The international community has not been able to agree on a common definition. Australia is the only country in the world that defines space as anything beyond 100 kilometers above the ground. While nations may own the ‘air’ over them, ‘space’ is for everybody. No nation can own property in space, and no nation can make any territorial claim in space. You need consent to fly over another country’s airspace. But if you are in ‘outer space’, you can fly over any country without consent, and even legally engage in espionage.

• With the establishment of the United States’ Space Force, we will likely see the rules of war extended into outer space. The language in the Outer Space Treaty about the use of outer space for exclusively peaceful purposes needs interpretation. ‘Peaceful purposes’ only prohibits the aggressive use of military force. So non-aggressive military force is okay? Has the establishment of the U.S. Space Force made the militarization of space perfectly legal?

• At the end of the day, the Space Force is about building political constituency for orbit, while investing in spacecraft that can defend and attack, if necessary. This represents a great deal of money for private companies, with almost half-a-dozen government defense agencies already pumping millions of dollars into space startups to build everything from radar networks to high-tech materials.

• The majority of the money to be made in space lies in satellite-provided services, and these services are likely to surge the space economy. The significant increase in satellites, far beyond the 2,300 operational satellites in space now, will bring a multitude of costs and benefits. We have seen venture capitalists directing millions of dollars towards small satellite companies with big aspirations, such as Spire, Capella Space, Hawkeye360, and Swarm.

• These space economy companies vary in their business models, from communicating with internet devices to tracking radio signals in order to gather radar data, and imaging every angle of the Earth. This all depends on the cost of building and operating the spacecraft needed to accomplish the work that they desire. SpaceX and Boeing are in the final phase of their private space transportation service in cooperation with NASA. Soon, both companies will have permission to start flying wealthy space tourists and corporate point men into space.

• On June 3rd, NASA launched astronauts into space from U.S. soil for the first time since 2011, and took them to the International Space Station via Falcon 9, a vehicle that was purchased from SpaceX. For $250,000, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will take tourists to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere in space. But NASA’s aim is the Moon. Since ice water was discovered on the Moon, starry-eyed space seekers would like to see NASA establish a sustainable human presence on the Moon rather than hiring private companies to build rovers, landers, and spacecraft to carry scientific instruments to the Moon.

• But, as we have seen, the commercial economy benefits greatly from scientific advancements gleaned from space exploration, such as transistors, solar panels, and batteries. It has brought forth the smartphone revolution, the evolution of broadcast media, telecommunications, commerce, and the internet as a whole. The new era of space exploration may be one small step for man, but it is one giant leap for the private sector economy.

 

The commercial space industry is heating up– 50 years ago, outer space was reserved for the most powerful of nations and the most dominant governments, but today, there is a democratization of space. Commercial industry is inching us closer to the cosmos, and in the process, there is a growing interdependence between what is happening hundreds of miles up into space and down below on Earth. Currently, the space market is worth approximately US$400 billion, and the commercial space industry, using multi-million-dollar rockets and satellites, is increasingly playing a part in our everyday lives. Although you may have been hearing about this phenomenon in recent years, this launch into the new world has been ongoing for decades.

This brings about the question of property rights. Where does space begin, and if there is a dispute in space, who decides it? Australia is the only country in the world that defines where space begins; defining it as 100 kilometers up. However, where the air ends (and the air law regime, which is governed by the International Civil Aviation Organization), and where space begins is a matter that the international community have not been able to agree on. People either want to set limits- set a height based on kilometers like Australia has done, or they take the approach of the United States who look at it as a use, i.e. what did you use, are you launching a rocket that is intended to go into orbit, or are you just launching a plane that is going to go high into the air. This is important, because nations own the air over them. Right now, space is for everybody. No nation can own property in space, and no nation can make any territorial claim in space.

You need consent to fly over another country if you are in the airspace, but on the flip side of that, if you believe that you are in outer space, you can fly over any country without consent, and even engage in espionage legally. Espionage is one part of the political military contest, but how else is space dealt with from a military perspective? With the recent establishment of the United State’s Space Force, we will likely see the same rules of war extended into outer space. The language in the Outer Space Treaty about the use of outer space for exclusively peaceful purposes is beautifully aspirational language, but the devil is in the interpretation: what does it mean to use space for peaceful purposes? The way that this has been virtually explained is that peaceful purposes only prohibit the aggressive use of military force, and as long as you are not engaged in naked aggression, then you are peaceful in your use of outer space.

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