Lawfare Daily: Chris Johnson on Space Law (or Lack Thereof)

[Intro]

Chris Johnson: Well, actually, you know, what our private companies do in space, we are internationally responsible, answerable for. There's no test, as we find in other areas of international law, about overall control or effective control, a Nicaragua test. We don't have to do any of that when it comes to space activities. If a national government authorized that space activity, gave it a license and permission to go to space, that state is internationally answerable for it.

Kevin Frazier: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Kevin Frazier, senior research fellow in the constitutional studies program at the University of Texas at Austin and a Tarbell fellow at Lawfare joined by Chris Johnson, director of legal affairs and space law for Secure World Foundation and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University.

Chris Johnson: We've actually put constraints on what we put in space. This is Article 4 of the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction into space where they're stationing in space or stationing on celestial bodies. This is, you know, the Americans and the Soviets were able to come to agreement on that arms control measure.

Kevin Frazier: Today, we're talking about space. This out of this world conversation though, is grounded in terrestrial factors, including geopolitical trends, public-private partnerships, and national security considerations.

[Main Podcast]

In 2020, you wrote quote, outer space activities are now more important to the United States than at almost any time in our history. Space technology and services provide critical national security capabilities, scientific knowledge, economic opportunities, and the tools to understand and respond to a changing climate.

That was from 2020, right after Biden was elected. We're talking on November 11th, 2024, right after we learned that President Trump will be entering his second term. Do you stand by that quote, or would you update that quote, that we're still at one of the most critical times of outer space activity in the United States history?

Chris Johnson: I like that quote. You know, I have to think, of course it is true that the U.S., and, you know, any state in the globalized world relies on space, and utilizes and can utilize space. I think that we'll have more, you know, consistent and pressing issues when it, when we think about how we rely on space.

I think there are some things which are up for grabs and you know, may stand to change in terms of, you know, interaction with the commercial sector and how NASA does its, you know, how the U.S. government does its space procurement could bear some revisiting. And I think that they are going to, you know, be revisited and scrutinized as we head into Trump 2.0.

Kevin Frazier: Thinking about that, Trump 2.0, you've also remarked in some of your scholarship that space policy is maybe one of those odd areas where we don't see a ton of partisan variance from one administration to the next. Obama's policies were in some ways adopted by Trump. Trump's policies in some ways were adopted by Biden.

Do you think that will continue to be the case going forward? And what is kind of the underlying rationale for why we may see more consistency in space than in other contexts?

Chris Johnson: Yeah, I mean, I certainly hope so. And I think that administrations on either side of the aisle understand that it makes sense to have consistency and to, you know, stick with many of the decisions and the actions of the previous administration when it comes to space because, and why is that? Because space activities take a long time to, you know, especially when it's human spaceflight or, you know, space sciences, they take years. And you don't want to be switching the course and switching plans and programs and ambitions and destinations every four years.

And that truth of the programmatic nature of space activities has dawned on and has been realized by, you know, both Republicans and Democrats. So the example that we could talk about is, when it comes to space policy and space governance, going back to, I would say, going back to Obama, but certainly under Trump, this idea that there needs to be, you know, some steady hands at the wheel that take decisions and we stick with those decisions across administrations.

So even under Trump, we had the reestablishment of the National Space Council, which was quite productive, and numerous space policy directives. And also, you know, Artemis program, our announcement of the Artemis program and this development of the Artemis Accords under Trump. So, you know, those were policy initiatives that the Biden administration continued on with, and it would make sense that Trump 2.0 sticks with those steps. I think that they, hopefully my ambition, I'm not going to make predictions, but my aspiration is that they continue to have that. They stick with that. I think we're going to see, or I would like to see, further meetings of the National Space Council, further space policy directives, on a number of issues.

Of course, sticking with the Artemis program and return to the Moon with Mars as a horizon destination. But certainly returning to the Moon, and doing it with commercial partners and international partners. I think that, I think we're going to see that, actually. Or I hope that we see that.

Kevin Frazier: And just to level set, or should I say space set for our listeners, can you tell us a little bit more about the Artemis Accord and why that may be particularly important to continue to support in 2024 and beyond?

Chris Johnson: Long story short, it's important to set because it's international in nature. I mean, I'll take a step back. When we go to space, we're going to a place beyond national territory, a place where all states and their nongovernmental actors are free to go, and for which governments are internationally responsible.

So when we go there, it is an international endeavor. It makes sense to have international cooperation, to do that successfully and responsibly. So Artemis Accords are part and parcel with the Artemis program, of returning to the moon, a NASA-led program, which is international in nature. And the Artemis Accords are the policy component of that ambition to return to the moon, to say that if you are going back to the moon, with NASA, here are the principles that we are adhering to, and we'd want you to adhere to.

Artemis Accords, you can look them up, they are short and well-written and pretty clear. And they substantially repeat what is already existing international law in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, with a few innovations that make sense because it is not 1967. You know, namely Artemis Accords makes some particular advancements in, I would say, transparency, interoperability, cultural heritage, and space resources.

Things and, well, elements and topics which were not present in the Outer Space Treaty, or not clearly present in the Outer Space Treaty, and NASA understood and realized that we needed to make advancements on those particular topics. And so, NASA negotiated, NASA and State Department negotiated Artemis Accords, the Artemis Accords with other countries that it hoped to bring along and include in its Artemis program.

However, it is not international law. It's not a binding international legal instrument. It is a policy document. And I think that we've already seen, this is, you know, for the space law nerds out there, we've the Artemis Accords already has more parties to it than the Moon agreement.

Kevin Frazier: There we go.

Chris Johnson: So it is already more successful as an internationally negotiated instrument dressing how we will conduct space activities and activities on the Moon. It’s already more successful than the Moon Agreement. And I think that I wouldn't be surprised if Trump 2.0 continues to press ahead with promoting the Artemis Accords and continues on with Artemis program, return to the moon.

But I think while I've just spoken about, you know, consistency with existing programs, I think we will see, and there's a strong chance of some type of revisiting how we conduct those programs. So not necessarily the missions themselves, but the, let's say the procurement for those missions. And I think that if we have Elon serving in the government or advising the government in some capacity, it may mean, and I think this would be good if NASA was to, and the rest of the U.S. government would to really understand and utilize what SpaceX can do in terms of bringing down the costs and increasing the amount of mass that we can put into space.

Starship, you know, SpaceX's Starship bus to space, honestly changes the equation for how much we can put into space and how much it costs. And I'm not a rocketry person, but it really would make sense to revisit and reevaluate how we're going to be conducting Artemis activities. It is certainly foreseeable and would make sense that Starship has a large role in that, getting things to deep space and beyond geosynchronous orbit, xGEO as they call it, getting things to the surface, the Moon, other celestial destinations. SpaceX and Starship seem like the thrifty and hopefully reliable way to get there.

Kevin Frazier: So, am I correct in understanding that's one bus we wouldn't want to miss?

Chris Johnson: Yeah, I think so.

Kevin Frazier: It's a bad attempt at a joke, you know, then my students will tell you that a lot of these fall flat. So we'll just, we'll breeze over that one and hopefully one or two listeners got a chuckle.

But I'm keen to know, with respect to perhaps seeing a change in procurement, more generally before we get into the weeds of procurement, if we can start off with thinking about the Artemis Accords and the state of space law generally.

You've done a lot of thinking about what hard laws could actually govern some aspects of space.  Where are we on the spectrum right now of total Wild West, anything goes in space, to hey we've got a space regulator and there's a cop on the beat that's gonna take you out if you let some space debris go in the wrong location. Where are we right now? And where do you think we may be moving? Is it going to a continuation of just you do you, as long as you don't hurt anyone else, or are we going to see some hard laws sooner rather than later?

Chris Johnson: So this is an excellent question. It requires even taking a step back to even figure out how to answer that question. So I am a space lawyer. And what I do at Secure World, which is an NGO focused on peaceful uses of outer space, is talk about and try and promote the rule of law in outer space. And we work at the United Nations level, and we also work at the state level in engaging with governments. I also teach international space law at Georgetown.

So, from my perspective, as an international lawyer, I am always returning to the international legal framework, which, of course, is underpinned by the UN Charter, but we have a set, a specialized regime of international space law, the main element of that, the principal legal instrument is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was negotiated at the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. And the negotiation and drafting of it was led by the United States government, by Ambassador Arthur Goldberg.

You know, Justice Goldberg was sent to the UN to negotiate an internationally binding space treaty by President Johnson. And this was, you know, in the 1960s Apollo-era Cold War space race, and sent by a president to negotiate a treaty to govern space and negotiate it through the UN machinery. And it really was a U.S. and Russian effort to, you know, the U.S. and the Russians, the Soviets had to cooperate and consolidate their views on a binding, short, concise legal instrument.

And so, you know, when we look at international law and binding international law, this is a document that the U.S. was the chief proponent on and the Outer Space Treaty as of 2024 has over 100 states parties to the treaty. I think it's 112 or 113 at my last count, with an additional 22, 23 states which have signed but not yet ratified it. It is a very successful, you know, U.N. negotiated treaty. And when states want to show that they are serious about space activities, they do, usually two things they do right off the bat. They join the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or COPUOS, and they sign the Outer Space Treaty, to signal to the rest of the world we are entering into the arena. We take our commitments and our obligations under international law seriously, and we want to be seen as a partner that is, of course, bound by the Outer Space Treaty, but also avails itself of the protections under the Outer Space Treaty.

So, the Outer Space Treaty is then supplemented with additional treaties, you know, the Astronaut Protection of Astronauts in 1968, the Astronaut Rescue and Return Agreement, the 1972 Liability Convention dealing with damage caused by space objects and the 1975 Registration Convention dealing with the registration of space objects as a way to show the rest of the world what you're doing in space and also to consolidate your national, territorial, jurisdictional powers and sovereign powers of jurisdiction over space objects.

But the Outer Space Treaty is what we often always, you know, discussions begin with the Outer Space Treaty. And when we talk about our rights and responsibilities in outer space, it says that, and this is unique in international law, states are responsible for their national activities, including those activities which are conducted by nongovernmental i.e. private actors.

So this is what is unique in space law and what space lawyers have to remind other lawyers, other international lawyers, as well as people in the space industry and many other communities: well, actually, you know, what our private companies do in space, we are internationally responsible, answerable for. There's no test as we find in other areas of international law about overall control or effective control, a Nicaragua test. We don't have to do any of that when it comes to space activities. If a national government authorized that space activity, gave it a license and permission to go to space, that state is internationally answerable for it.

And the flip side of that is that is the way that states can exercise jurisdiction and impose their national rules into the space domain. So if an astronaut is walking around the surface of the moon, we're in an area outside of state territory, but the state that launched that astronaut and that space vehicle has a component of its sovereignty, an aspect of its sovereignty over that astronaut. Namely, it has jurisdiction and control over that astronaut. And that's all we can have in space is authority over our national space objects.

And that's what we need to stress, is that we want, when we want to impose the Artemis Accords or what we want to tell a commercial actor in LEO to get out of the way because there's a chance of a collision. We can only do that if we are the authorizing state and we have jurisdiction control over that. That's really what the linchpin of it is, the foundation of it is that jurisdiction control over our space objects because we're answerable for it.

We have a few later notions about behavior that we can find in Article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty about states should be guided by considerations, you know, guided by the principles of cooperation and mutual assistance and due regard to the corresponding interests of other actors, and they should avoid harmful interference with other actors and contamination of the space domain, and they should take appropriate steps that get it a little bit into how we should behave in space, but it's really just about, I'm responsible for our national actors, state B, state X, state C, you're responsible for your national actors.

Kevin Frazier: And what's fascinating as a, I'll say I, my backdoor entry into space law as an area of interest started with interest in the law of the sea. And we see this, notion of, you know, the flag you fly on your ship being carried with you as you sail around the world, transferring into the space law domain. And I think it has really interesting implications when we think about the sort of tragedy of the commons with respect to use and potential abuse of space.

So could you comment briefly on the current state of space, with respect to just how populated are things getting right now? When folks look up at the sky, it's no longer us just having a Sputnik moment, right? There's not one little tiny satellite floating over. Instead, you see a swarm of Starlink satellites. And everyone's warning that soon, you know, there'll be so much space debris that who knows if you can even launch a mission, or so many Starlink satellites that you'll never see the sky. Where are we right now? Just how populated can we expect things to get in the coming years? As you mentioned, we have more and more mechanisms, starships, more vehicles, more opportunities to kind of populate the sky with more and more debris and more and more objects.

Chris Johnson: So I, rather than thinking of outer space as one large homogenous domain. I, and many others, think about it and break it into particular specific domains. And the first one is LEO, Low Earth Orbit. And this is the domain that is different from other domains and more populated. And many, many more actors, many, many more pieces of debris, chances of collision. This is this domain closest to earth that gives the most concern to actors, established actors and incoming actors.

So Low Earth Orbit is just right above us and is what we use for everything from remote sensing cameras pointed back at the earth to do earth sciences and to detect and surveil things on earth, remote sensing. And it's also telecom where we use it for telecommunications in terms of internet from space. This is where Starlink is situated. LEO is a domain for commerce. But it's also a domain for national security, it is a domain for science, and it is the most congested domain with the most amount of space debris.

This is different once we get higher into space and into higher orbits. Once we get into medium earth orbit where you see more of the GPS satellites, and then I think about GEO, geosynchronous orbit. GEO is at 35,000, 36,000 kilometers. This is, you know, the GEO domain is a more orderly domain. There's fewer actors in the GEO domain.

The satellites that are there are larger. They're what we call exquisite satellites. They're unique. They have longer lifespans and they are performing different activities and they're larger, more expensive. And I think the actors there are more aware of the precious nature of that domain and more willing to govern themselves in an orderly fashion and go to orbital slots, these specific locations in GEO, for a set amount of time, do station keeping in their orbital box as they, maybe space weather has them drift around a little bit.

And the slots at GEO and the frequencies we use at GEO are governed and assisted by the International Telecommunications Union, the ITU, and the National Administrators of Radio Frequency Slots and Frequencies. So, there is debris at GEO and there are worrying behaviors at GEO, but this is quite different than Low Earth Orbit, which is a different domain, closer to Earth, different actors. Many, many more actors doing many, many more different types of activities.

We use LEO for remote sensing. We also use internet from space. This is where startup companies and CubeSats are being launched. This is where colleges and universities are building their first, you know, test CubeSats and MicroSats to see if whether they can put stuff in space and it's, I don't want to say a domain for amateurs, but it's a domain where amateurs are also present, you know, universities, startup companies. And the challenges for debris and the challenges posed by debris are more worrying in LEO.

And this gets into space traffic management. Space traffic management is about, you know, knowing where things are, knowing where things are going, and then hopefully getting out of the way of potential collisions, conjunctions, and this is, you know, when we can track things down to a particular size, but we cannot track things smaller than, say, 20 centimeters. And we basically just have computer models and predictions of where things have been, where they are, and where they are likely going, but they're just models. They're just predictions.

The chances of collisions and new debris creating events in LEO is one of the most worrying concerns when we have, you know, now and going into the future for all actors who are going to the space domain. And so I think of LEO as a different domain than I do for GEO and then xGEO deep space and onto celestial bodies. People in the space industry think about just different domains and what's happening in those, in these different domains.

Kevin Frazier: So if you were in a room right now with the Trump administration and they asked you, hey, Chris, think a lot about space. Let's bring things back to Earth here. How are national security concerns mapping into space either at LEO or GEO? Are we starting to see our adversaries start to evidence some maybe more competitive behavior or more adversarial behavior with respect to maybe a new space race or manifestations of what we've seen in geopolitics on the Earth? Are we seeing new frontiers, new battles start to emerge in space?

Chris Johnson: So, I point out that every country in the world shares a border with space. And states use space, but the largest user of space is the United States government. And the largest user within the United States government is the U.S. military. It is not NASA. So, the U.S. military and the United States itself understands how important and precious the space domain is and the need to keep it orderly, and as debris free as possible and sustainable for the long term.

Space sustainability is merely the practices of allowing you to do what you want to do now and into the long term. It is just long-term rationality. It is not reaping all the gains in the short term. to the detriment of long-term gains and long-term benefits. It's long-term rationality. That's all it really is.

And the U.S. military knows that, and the United States government knows that, and has known that, that space sustainability is, to put it in their terms, it is akin to mission assurance. How are we certain that our missions are going to be successful now and into the future, including five years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, whatever your time horizon is?

There's that overlap between space sustainability and if you want to call it space environmentalism or space conservationism and mission assurance. It's just good practices. There is, you know, that, that specter of unsustainable space and proliferating space debris, including even intentionally creating space debris, and we've seen instances of states intentionally creating space debris.

You know, if you want to be a soft power leader in space, and get other actors on board, you don't cajole them or bully them, you appeal to their interests. And in appealing to their interests, they say, well, we use space. Don't you also want to benefit from space? And therefore let's all adopt and adhere to as best we can, some best practices for the space domain, including, you know, mission assurance, i.e. space sustainability, not creating space debris and being responsible in space.

Kevin Frazier: So with respect to that responsibility and mindset and that sort of, let's preserve this for future optionality. Is everyone still playing by those terms? In turn, have we seen, for example, China start to get more aggressive in space or Russia start to get more aggressive in space? Or would you say the major players are still playing more or less by those same rules and adopting that same mentality?

Chris Johnson: We have seen instances where states have intentionally created space debris for uncertain, and I would say unjustified purposes. And when they create space debris through intentional destruction of their own assets on orbit, they create clouds of debris that are long lived and unpredictable and affect all other users of the space domain at those particular orbits.

And those debris clouds spread and proliferate and create clouds of debris that smear around the entire globe, increase in altitude, decrease in altitude, and threaten all other users. We don't want to see any more of that. We have also seen, I would characterize as, unfriendly, not clearly illegal activities in space.

Unfriendly behavior in LEO and in geosynchronous orbit of satellites creeping around. Looking as though they are surveilling other spacecraft, seeing if they can perform rendezvous and proximity operations, maybe testing it on their own spacecraft. So we've seen some incidents where and some activities where one space object becomes multiple space objects.

And it looks as though it's testing its ability and its capabilities to grapple with and seize other spacecraft on orbit, but we haven't seen anything that is, I think, clearly illegal. We haven't seen a use of force in space. I think, and I was pointing out this out earlier: no state owns outer space. We merely have the right to go there. We have the freedoms in Article 1 to access and use outer space. Freedoms in Article 1 of the Outer Space Treaty.

So, I see that other states, including geopolitical rivals, are ambitious in space, launching their own GPS systems, which they call PMT, position, navigation, and timing systems. Their own space stations, China has its own crewed space station. That is not aggressive, it's ambitious. And it says that other states are also ambitious to do bold things in outer space. And that's how I would characterize that, is that if China wants to do space sciences and put up spacecraft to remotely sense the Earth, that's not hostile. That's Article 1 freedom. They're allowed to do that, including looking back down at Earth.

And, you know, and this gets a little bit into the history of space flight. But when the Americans saw Sputnik, they said, oh, we don't have a problem with that because that means we can also do that. We're not going to object to the free access and use of outer space. If they can put up a spacecraft, so can we, and maybe we're going to put up spacecraft which surveil the Earth. So we're going to allow that to be lawful as instant custom. And as soon as we can, we're also going to do similar things in space.

That reciprocal, you do what you want to do. We're going to do what we want to do. And maybe let's come up with some minimum constraints on what we want to do. There are some constraints on what we can put in space. As I mentioned before, we have that responsibility, but we've actually put constraints on what we put in space. This is Article 4 of the Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction into space or they're stationing in space or stationing on celestial bodies.

This is, you know, the Americans and the Soviets were able to come to agreement on that arms control measure. To say let's take that formally off the table. Let's prohibit that and we'll keep space a militarized domain. We will keep space a non-weaponized domain, or at least the largest, most indiscriminate weapons. Let's prohibit that from being placed in space.

Kevin Frazier: And speaking of big transitions from kind of what acceptable behavior may be down earthed and how the space industry was operated in the 1960s and 50s and so on and so forth, obviously we've kind of now entered a pre-SpaceX era and a post-SpaceX era.

What does this new procurement reality look like for NASA and for the U.S. government? And do you anticipate this sort of continued reliance on private actors to be the norm going forward? Is there any going back? Do we want to go back or is this all sort of a net positive where suddenly we can have more competition, greater capacity, greater innovation, and so on?

Chris Johnson: So, I mean, this is where economists can step in and say, here are things which the U S. government could and should be doing. And here are things where it, they don't, the right incentives don't exist for a government to be doing these things.

NASA, and I think NASA will admit this, they would rather be doing science than building hardware and launching rockets and building rockets. They would rather be performing space science. And that largely would hold true for other arms of the U.S. government, whether it's the Air Force or Space Force or other agencies. To the extent that they can utilize commercial ambitions and commercial capabilities, it makes sense to utilize and harness those market incentives.

So I would be very happy if, it would probably save taxpayer dollars, if NASA was utilizing to the fullest extent, what the commercial industry can provide, and that's largely just transportation. But it could also be building spacecraft and building, especially if it's components of spacecraft, which can be production line hardware.

Kevin Frazier: And before I let you get your head back in the clouds, or should I say the LEO, can you tell us a little bit more about one trend or one narrative you're really tracking right now with respect to the development and evolution of space law? What's one thing that listeners should clue in on to the extent that they've been persuaded to care a little bit more about space law?

Chris Johnson: So I have attended the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space for over a decade now. My organization is an observer organization at COPUOS, and we have watched international diplomacy and as an observer taking part in just a little bit of international diplomacy at the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, as well as on the security side, up in Geneva, where arms control and disarmament is discussed, including arms control and disarmament for space.

There actually are a number of initiatives which are taking place in peaceful uses of outer space and the security side of outer space. One thing that we're watching is on the security side, first, there is a open-ended working group and potentially a couple open-ended working groups on responsible behavior in space. This is, and it gets a little bit into the weeds in tracking all these open-ended working groups and the UNGA resolutions, which created them. You know, I'll give you the highlights of it though.

Briefly, it is that the Western countries were proponents of developing some type of international instruments, binding or nonbinding doesn't matter, necessarily, that addresses behavior in space. And let's take a look at what behavior is responsible and what behavior is not responsible. And this was based off of a UNGA resolutions that were promoted by the U.S., but also by the United Kingdom. And the U.K., you know, was a big proponent of this UNGA resolution on responsible behavior. So let's take a look at what is responsible behavior. Can a working group define what responsible behavior is? Because in so doing, you're also defining what irresponsible behavior is.

So that was the one initiative which has some legs at the UN, and we're tracking it and we're seeing where it goes, this open-ended working group. A different approach taken by different nations, perhaps because of their legal traditions, or perhaps for other purposes, was one focused on actual binding international law that would look at specific technologies and trying to outlaw specific technologies.

So, Russia and China had their own initiatives at the UN, focused on Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space, where they would be looking at binding treaty law. And this is more difficult, especially because it may be impossible to define what a space weapon is or what a space weapon isn't. Many things are dual use, and it's difficult to verify what people have placed in space.

So, this is another initiative that is taking place at the UN on Prevention Of Arms Race in Outer Space. These discussions happen in Geneva, but they also happen up in New York at UN headquarters. We just had resolutions from UN General Assembly's first committee on both of these open ended working groups and voting for these working groups.

So we're tracking that, and this is, this will take a number of years, even for those working groups to meet, for them to come up with any type of deliverable. It is a long diplomatic process that is fraught with geopolitics and being affected by other spheres of geopolitics and sometimes it can play out and stumble and fall, not because of the substance of the discussion, but sometimes because of procedural issues.

We track that but when we return to Vienna, this is the other side of space discussions, I attend the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space: COPUOS, and its two subcommittees, the scientific and technical subcommittee and the legal subcommittee. They meet in Vienna for a week and a half or two weeks at a time. A number of activities are happening there.

Just to make sure that I include all of them, and I'll go from LEO on outward. You may have heard this phrase, dark and quiet skies, meaning as we launch tens of thousands of satellites into Low Earth Orbit by various companies, although it's only a few countries that are doing it, as we really fill LEO with spacecraft, it has effects here on Earth, not just to people that are looking up at night and seeing a line of Starlink satellites, but it really is affecting astronomy, ground based astronomy.

Optical and radio astronomy is being affected if you're trying to image a distant pulsar and over, and you need to keep your camera shutter open for, you know, long periods of time, minutes, hours, and that image, the aperture, is open and the images has these streaks of Starlink satellites that completely ruin the image.

Kevin Frazier: And they spell Elon, right, when they go by?

Chris Johnson: They just completely ruin the image. And the image that is being ruined is not just a pretty image that can inspire people. It's also cost money. And it is data and observation time and operational time for these observatories. So we've known about this problem, but it really has sprung up in relevance and importance and urgency in the last handful of years. There's efforts at the United Nations under this Dark and Quiet Skies agenda item and working group to see how we can address this, to see how these deleterious effects can be mitigated.

So I am tracking dark and quiet skies at the UN, at COPUOS. It is back on the agenda. It went away for a year or so because of let's say procedural issues and some political issues. But there's the chance that productive deliverables and productive activity and maybe useful deliverables can happen under Dark and Quiet Skies, especially because the countries that are affected by global constellations, quote unquote mega constellations, are numerous.

This is the Global South. This is every country that has a large observatory on its territory. So this is, you know, Chile, which has observatories, and Spain and South Africa and Australia with the Square Kilometer Array. People care about Dark and Quiet Skies and it is gaining traction and relevance and salience at the UN.

Kevin Frazier: And I will just say it is an interesting debate because of the issue with respect to internet access, on the other side of the equation, right? Obviously you need to have, and to Elon's credit and to SpaceX's credit, the number of people in those same communities who can now access the internet as a result of the proliferation of satellites in the sky. Tough trade offs there. So I will definitely be paying attention to that as well.

Chris Johnson: Yeah, so, Dark and Quiet Skies, you know, this is still an ongoing discussion, but we'll be tracking it closely and contributing. There's interesting space law aspects of it, although space law doesn't directly govern it, not clearly, because mega constellations, global constellations, that's in space, that's a space activity, it's governed by space law.

Observatories on the ground, that's not necessarily a space activity as space law sees it. It's definitely space exploration. It's definitely space science. It's definitely within the space industry, but it's not protected by space law. So here, this is, you know, for the theorists out there, this is a difficult overlap or gap between how an activity is governed and whether observatories on the ground are protected by Article 9 of the Outer Space Treaty, should they be given due regard, as a corresponding interest? Are they owed cooperation and mutual assistance, or is it just totally a separate terrestrial activity?

 I don't have a clear answer for that. I've certainly read papers on it. I've certainly graded papers and had discussions on that. I know what I'd like space law to say, but I can't say with any confidence that space law actually says it. So we have to be modest about what the law actually says on some of these topics.

Kevin Frazier: Well, I know that there's a lot of grading to get to, and I can't interfere with all of that for too much of an afternoon. So I think we're going to have to leave it there, unfortunately, with manifold open questions to explore, but I trust that we'll have some developments to bring you back on the pod sooner rather than later.

Chris Johnson: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Kevin Frazier: Thanks Chris.

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