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Strengthening the Outer Space Treaty

Two years after Yuri Gagarin became the first human to venture into space, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the ‘Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space.’ It recognised “the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes.” The declaration also stated that neither outer space nor celestial bodies should be appropriated by any country.

The ideals laid out in the 1963 declaration were enshrined in an international treaty that was adopted in December 1966 and which entered into force a year later. The Outer Space Treaty, as it is usually called, lays the legal foundation for activities in space. Further multilateral space treaties followed, some of which elaborated on provisions in the Outer Space Treaty. Like the 1963 declaration, the Outer Space Treaty too affirmed space as belonging to all of humanity, a realm that should be used for “peaceful purposes.”

The Outer Space Treaty specifically prohibited the placing of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth, in outer space, or on celestial bodies. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the treaty is riven by loopholes. Where, for instance, does air space (over which countries have national sovereignty) end and space, which is open to all nations, begin? More importantly, the treaty makes no effort to specify what ought and ought not to be considered “peaceful purposes” in space or define a space weapon.

It must be recognised that establishing such definitions is not easy. Human endeavours in space are often intrinsically dual-purpose. Early satellites and the first human space travellers journeyed aboard powerful rockets that were initially developed by the Soviet Union and the U.S. to lob nuclear warheads at one another. High-resolution space imageries of the sort now freely available from Google Earth over the Internet were once only produced by spy satellites. Communication satellites that employ much the same technology as the ones that beam TV programmes, relay large quantities of data and carry telephone conversations are an increasingly important part of the war machinery of many countries.

In the absence of definitions laid down in international law, the use of space for military purposes has ballooned, with possibly dangerous consequences. These days, “peaceful” uses of outer space is often taken to denote only a “non-aggressive” purpose and even that conceptual distinction may not long endure.

During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union looked at the possibilities of using nuclear weapons to take out satellites and stop ballistic missiles fired by the other. To that end, the two countries carried out a number of high-altitude nuclear tests in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Finding such tests to be counterproductive, soon afterwards they negotiated and signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963 that banned the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water.

Meanwhile, the use of satellites to support conventional warfare has grown dramatically. The U.S. demonstrated the effectiveness of this strategy in the first Gulf War of 1991 and space has played an important part in U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years. It is a lesson that other countries have no doubt taken to heart.

But the resulting dependence on space assets inevitably raises concerns of protecting those vital satellites. It also sets off ideas of trying to blunt an opponent’s military capabilities by temporarily or permanently disabling their access to satellites.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union tested a range of anti-satellite (ASAT) weaponry during their Cold War stand-off, including hit-to-kill devices carried by missiles. More recently, China destroyed one of its aging weather satellites with an impactor launched by a missile in January 2007. The U.S. responded by blowing up one of its dying spy satellites in February this year with a modified version of a missile interceptor developed for ballistic missile defence.

Moreover, the ASAT potential of high-energy lasers has been extensively explored by the U.S., the Soviet Union/Russia and China, according to Space Security 2008, an annual publication brought out by a consortium of governmental, non-governmental and academic organisations. The publication points out that the U.S. is continuing to test airborne lasers as part of its ballistic missile defence and that such lasers could have ASAT capabilities. Several countries were developing ground-based lasers, adaptive optics and tracking systems that allowed laser energy to be accurately directed at a passing satellite, it noted. The U.S. withdrawal in 2001 from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty has raised concerns, especially among the Russians and the Chinese, about its intentions in space. Ballistic missile defence systems, whether ground-based, airborne or space-based, can also potentially target satellites. The response could be to try and overwhelm the system with many more missiles and warheads as well as to target space assets needed for ballistic defence.

Besides, more and more countries are developing space capabilities of one kind or another. Given the dual-use possibilities, such capability can also mean the option to turn space into another theatre of war. Bilateral arms treaties between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at least provided a measure of stability in that they forbade attacking each other’s key military satellites. But these treaties do not apply to the new players.

An internationally-binding agreement to strengthen the Outer Space Treaty is therefore both desirable and increasingly a necessity. The obvious forum for that would the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. As Space Security 2008 points out, “Since 1981 the [U.N. General Assembly] has passed an annual resolution asking all states to refrain from actions contrary to the peaceful use of outer space and calling for negotiations in the [Conference on Disarmament] on a multilateral agreement to support [a Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space treaty].” However, such talks at the Conference on Disarmament have made absolutely no progress.

As the dominant player by far in terms of both civilian and military use of space, the U.S. is seeking to maintain its position and is currently unwilling to accept any curbs on its options, pointed out S. Chandrashekar, formerly on the headquarters staff of the Indian Space Research Organisation and now a faculty member at IIM Bangalore.

The agreement between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to avoid attacking each other’s satellites began to unravel in the early 1980s with President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (the Star Wars programme), which sought to establish ground and space systems to ward off nuclear ballistic missiles, according to Subrata Ghoshroy, who is currently with the Science, Technology and Society programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the U.S. He himself spent many years in the U.S. defence industry working on high-power lasers and went on to become a Congressional staffer with oversight functions on missile defence programmes.

This change in U.S. approach gathered momentum after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, he told this correspondent. After George W. Bush became President, the U.S. abrogated the ABM Treaty and there was “lot of emphasis on space control, on limiting [space] access to others, which were totally in contravention of the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.”

The reason being given for the change in approach is primarily that the U.S. could otherwise potentially be threatened by rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran, remarked Mr. Ghoshroy. One hypothetical scenario, which has been described as a “space Pearl Harbour”, is of a small nuclear device of about 10 kilo tonnes being exploded in space at an altitude of between 160 km to 600 km. Such an explosion, it is said, would create an artificial radiation belt that jeopardised satellites in Low Earth Orbit for up to two years.

At a talk he gave recently at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, Mr. Ghoshroy argued that the danger to satellites from such a nuclear explosion had been exaggerated. Starfish Prime, the most powerful high-altitude nuclear test carried by the U.S in 1962 using a 1.4 mega tonne nuclear bomb, knocked out over a period of several weeks only three of 13 satellites that were operational at the time and affected five more satellites in various ways. Telstar 1, a communications satellite launched the day after Starfish Prime, “didn’t die at all for a long time,” he told The Hindu. Moreover, it was estimated that a 10-kilo-tonne nuclear burst would increase electron densities in near-Earth orbits 10 to 20 fold. But satellites were already tolerating a 100 fold natural variability as a result of changes in the solar flux, he remarked.

It is foolhardy for the U.S. to push ahead with aggressive policies in space since with 400-plus satellites it had the most space assets, remarked Mr.Ghoshroy. “If you are living in a glass house, you shouldn’t be throwing stones.” With the new Obama Administration, it is possible that there would be a rethink about such aggressiveness in space and potentially some engagement to move forward discussions for strengthening the Outer Space Treaty, he said. But any such change in policy would take time.

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