Nobody Wants Rules in Space
As space becomes more crowded, there’s little hope for new international rules to make it safer.
Debris from a crashing Chinese rocket hurtling toward Earth and a Russian projectile-shooting spy satellite are the two examples of a big problem: too few rules governing how nations behave in space. Wednesday on Capitol Hill, lawmakers pressed Biden administration officials on what the United States can do to set some hard boundaries. The answer: The United States wants norms in space, but don’t expect anything legally binding anytime soon.
There are some internationally agreed upon rules for how nations can use space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty says countries can’t place weapons of mass destruction in space. But the treaty doesn’t prohibit putting other weapons in space, shooting at satellites with anti-satellite rockets, or launching large objects that will come crashing back down to Earth in lots of pieces with unpredictable trajectories.