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The head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s North American command, General André Lanata, recently visited U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The general, as all top commanders of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (described as NATO’s Warfare Development Command) in Norfolk, Virginia have been since his nation rejoined the NATO Military Command structure in 2009, is French. As the Supreme Allied Commander Europe is always American and the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe is always British when he’s not German.
While there he met with General James Dickinson, Commander of the United States Space Command; General Glen VanHerck, Commander of the United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command; and Lieutenant-General Alain Pelletier, Deputy Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command.
China launched the rocket on April 29 on a mission to deliver the main module of China’s first space station, the Tianhe . - Reuters
BANGKOK (The Nation/ANN): The core of China’s Long March 5B rocket was spotted circling the Earth in unstable orbit on Thursday (May 6), and experts say its debris is likely to reach the ground on Saturday or Sunday.
GISTDA executive director Pakorn Apaphant explained that China launched the rocket on April 29 on a mission to deliver the main module of China’s first space station, the Tianhe , which is expected to be completed in 2022.
He said GISTDA and three international agencies – the United States Space Command, European Space Agency and Aerospace – expect the 20-tonne rocket core to re-enter the atmosphere and tumble to Earth on Sunday.
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 traject