Scientific and Technological Advancement in Outer Space: Emerging Legal Challenges of Resource Exploitation

Abstract

The rapid transformation of outer space from a domain dominated by governmental exploration into a commercially active environment has created a new relationship between scientific advancement, resource exploitation, environmental protection, and international law. Advances in launch systems, satellite constellations, autonomous robotics, artificial intelligence, remote sensing, in-space manufacturing, lunar exploration, and in-situ resource utilization have significantly expanded the capacity of States and private entities to use extraterrestrial environments. At the same time, these developments have generated environmental consequences that were largely absent from the early architecture of international space law. Orbital congestion, space debris, atmospheric effects of launches and re-entries, contamination of celestial bodies, disturbance of lunar and planetary environments, and the prospective extraction of water, minerals and other resources raise questions about the environmental limits of scientific and commercial activity beyond Earth.