UN urged to declutter night sky as satellites threaten overcrowding

Astronomers have called on the UN to help regulate the night sky, as private satellites threaten space with overcrowding.

Astronomers have called on the UN to help regulate space as satellites threaten to clutter it up dangerously.

Forget national parks or Antarctica: the last great wilderness is the night sky. Astronomers have called on the UN to help regulate it, worried that it will soon be overcrowded with constellations of private satellites.

“When you look up in the night sky … should you see more moving objects than there are stars?” asked Jonathan McDowell, from Harvard University. “That has implications for all cultures, and it’s something the UN should probably weigh in on.”

Other astronomers have raised objections to plans by companies including SpaceX and Amazon to send up thousands of small satellites. The Royal Astronomical Society in Britain and the American Astronomical Society are concerned about the effect on the night sky.

Dr McDowell said the plans could be catastrophic to astronomy, but would affect amateur skywatchers too. “It is completely feasible to launch a constellation of satellites that would make the night sky unrecognisable.”

At present, he said, there is nothing to stop a company doing it. “If Jeff Bezos [of Amazon] gets his way, he wants to move heavy industry into space. Imagine if as well as 12,000 satellites, each weighing a couple of hundred kilos, we also have a few thousand factories in orbit? Then I think we’re really toast.”

Space law, such as it is, is built upon the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which was created during the Cold War and sees weaponisation as the big threat. Dr McDowell said that although the treaty was not ideal it could form the basis for a framework to be built on.

There is, for instance, a “due regard” clause forcing countries in space to consider their effects on other nations. “If you blow up a nuke in space you might fry other people’s satellites,” he said. “You could also read it broadly — if you put bright shiny things in space you have to give due regard to other countries to not have bright shiny things shined on them.”

Some experts believe more fundamental changes are needed. Yanal Abul Failat, a UK-based international lawyer at LXL LLP, said the laws were creaking. “We were thinking about governmental use and exploration,” he said. “The involvement of private actors … has given rise to a number of legal issues.”

Environmental regulation may be the least of it. Mr Abul Failat recently edited a book on legal policy and outer space law that considered insurance, liabilities and property rights — who owns asteroids for mining? Who owns them after they are lassoed by a billionaire? Tourism raises issues, too. If a tourist from the UK dies visiting the moon on a US rocket that took off from a Kazakh launch pad, who is liable?

At present, he said, countries often license private space activities on a national level, to protect the companies and people involved from the treaties’ legal inadequacies. But this can involve circumlocutions. Even something as apparently simple as giving a space tourist the rights afforded an astronaut is difficult — under one definition, you would first have to be given symbolic status as an “envoy of mankind”.

The Times