Regional development isn’t just about measuring the difference between today’s haves and have-nots to determine whether that gap might narrow or widen. Our idea of what is fair changes over time.
SpaceX’s Starlink service is slowly arriving in Africa, starting with Nigeria and Rwanda.
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A new publication clarifies how existing legal frameworks apply to space exploration and development. The McGill Manual also highlights the catastrophic implications of conflict in space.
Avoiding conflict is essential to maintaining space as a global commons, to be used by all.
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Our reliance on space infrastructure means that conflict in space would have global catastrophic consequences. But a recent declaration by the United States provides hope.
Pluto, the largest of the dwarf planets. This image was taken by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Space mining might be closer than you think. But legal issues about the ownership of space resources must be urgently addressed to avoid space wars over natural resources.
Artist’s rendition of NASA’s 2020 Mars rover collecting rocks with its robotic arm.
NASA
Martian meteorites allow scientists here on Earth to decode that planet’s geology, more than a decade before the first missions are scheduled to bring rocks back home from Mars.
The distance between the ISS and Earth is the same as about 3,850 football fields. To bring the station down, rockets will lower it a bit, and then gravity will send it crashing the rest of the way.
Australia is a member of the 1979 Moon Treaty, which sets rules for resource extraction from outer space. Now that the Trump administration is eyeing moon mining, will Australian companies join in?
Surface detail of the Tomanowos meteorite, showing cavities produced by dissolution of iron.
Eden, Janine and Jim/Wikipedia
Tomanowos, aka the Willamette Meteorite, may be the world’s most interesting rock. Its story includes catastrophic ice age floods, theft of Native American cultural heritage and plenty of human folly.
Scale models of rockets at China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation’s booth at the International Astronautical Congress.
FOCKE STRANGMANN/EPA
There are probably more than a million planets in the universe for every single grain of sand on Earth. That’s a lot of planets. My guess is that there probably is life elsewhere in the Universe.
The other galaxies are there, but they are hiding a very long way away.
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We are in the Milky Way. If you travelled on an extremely fast spaceship for more than two million years, you would reach our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. All other galaxies are even further away.
A podcast all about nothing. From the importance of doing nothing to the ill-effects of time spent in solitary confinement and what nothing means in space.
The theoretical state’s current territory is a satellite the size of a loaf of bread.
Wes Mountain/The Conversation
The real question is not so much about how to classify Asgardia – a satellite purporting to be a state – but the idea of human settlements in space in the future.
Space law is a growing and important discipline.
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Professor, Physics Department, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece ; Director and President of BoD of the National Observatory of Athens, Greece, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Professor of Law, IdEF College- Sorbonne Paris North University (Greece); Research fellow, AthensPIL center - National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece)., University of Athens