Space Governance

In recent years the Centre has expanded its focus on global governance so as to include the governance of the relations between states in carrying out activities of scientific exploration and various other uses of outer space, including the commercial exploitation and militarisation thereof. In keeping with the developments in the burgeoning areas of space tourism, space ‘weaponization’ and terrestrial applications of advanced satellite technology, the research activities of the Centre are structured around three sub-themes.

A first sub-theme addresses the rapidly developing sector of commercial uses of space and space tourism/transport. In an era when access to space is no longer the exclusive remit of institutional actors, and when even these actors are increasingly reliant on commercial operators for their needs with regard to space transportation, a number of new governance questions arise. These questions, along with those stemming from the parallel development of commercial space tourism, are the prime research topics of this sub-theme.

A second sub-theme of the Centre's space governance research activities is concerned with the militarisation of space. Whereas the military potential of space and space technologies has been evident ever since the beginning of the space era, the post-Cold War context has brought about a dramatic increase in the number of players in this arena. This evolution poses new political, legal and governance challenges as states’ national security interests must be reconciled with existing space law and jus in bello.

A third and final sub-theme revolves around the industrial exploitation of the plenitude of natural resources found in outer space and on or underneath the surface of celestial bodies in the solar system. The theoretical groundwork of the research undertaken in the context of this sub-theme is aimed at bringing about possible means of formulating concrete, practical improvements in the legal and political framework for cooperation between states and international organizations in the utilization of scarce and highly valuable space resources.

As output of the Centre’s focus on space governance, 2010 has seen the completion of the SP4ESP (Space Procurement for the European Space Policy) research project, which started in the summer of the previous year. Over the course of this project, the Centre collaborated with colleagues from the University of Cologne and the Charles University of Prague in an attempt to resolve the divergence in approach with respect to procurement that has plagued European Space Governance ever since the start of cooperation between the EU and ESA. The results of this study, carried out under the expert supervision of professors Stephan Hobe, Jan Wouters and Mahulena Hoffmann, were presented to DG Enterprise of the European Commission and to its European Space Policy Expert Group in September of 2010. A published version of this study is forthcoming with Lit Verlag as A Coherent European Procurement Law and Policy for the Space Sector – Towards a Third Way.