Wednesday, September 24, 2014

A Review of International Treaty Obligations vs the ASTEROIDS Act

Given their desire to extract resources from asteroids, US space industry stakeholders seek assurances that whatever is extracted can be processed and sold like terrestrial resources. In order to encourage investment, these businesses need to know that outer space resources can be protected by property rights.

On July 10, 2014, Congressmen Bill Posey (R-FL) and Derek Kilmer (D-WA) introduced the ASTEROIDS Act.1 The Act seeks to facilitate the commercial exploration and utilization of asteroid resources to meet national needs and to promote the right of US commercial entities to explore and utilize resources from asteroids, in accordance with existing international obligations of the US.

On September 9, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Subcommittee on Space, held a hearing titled, “Exploring Our Solar System: The ASTEROIDS Act as a Key Step.” The hearing addressed a host of topics, many of which were not germane to the Act. Fortunately, Joanne Gabrynowicz, Professor Emerita and former editor-in-chief of the University of Mississippi Journal of Space Law, offered testimony on the legal difficulties associated with crafting legislation for novel space activities. This article briefly explores some of these difficulties with a focus on international obligations that should be considered in an attempt to draft a law creating property rights over outer space resources.

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