Do Asteroids Have the Right to Exist? The Legal, Political and Economic Implications of the Possible Complete and Exhaustive Exploitation of Dwarf Planets, Asteroids and Other Small Solar System Bodies

Paper number

IAC-09.E3.P.6

Author

Mr. Ricky J. Lee, Schweizer Kobras, Australia

Year

2009

Abstract

Through the 1970s, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and, in particular, its Legal Sub-Committee, was charged with a futuristic responsibility: to consider the appropriate international legal and policy framework to regulate mining activities on celestial bodies in outer space.  This ran in parallel with the work of the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in formulating the applicable international legal and policy framework for mining activities on the deep seabed.  In both cases, a new policy doctrine was used in that both the deep seabed and celestial bodies were declared to be the “common heritage of mankind”, prescribing as such legal and economic duties and obligations on the countries conducting such activities that have been rejected by many industrialised countries ever since the respective treaties were adopted.

In the case of celestial bodies, the 1979 Agreement on the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (the “Moon Agreement”) restricts the application of its principles to celestial bodies in the Solar System only, so that new international rules will have to be formulated when humanity acquires the capability to travel and explore beyond the Kuiper Belt.  However, the Moon Agreement does not stipulate what type of celestial bodies it applies to or, more pertinently, what would constitute “celestial bodies” for the purposes of the Moon Agreement.  After all, bodies that exist in the Solar System range in size from Jupiter to microparticles, in composition from dense metallic solids such as a number of asteroids to frozen lumps of ice and rock such as most comets, and in distance to the Earth as close as the Moon and as far as distant Kuiper Belt objects.  The absence of such definitional limits raises a particular problem in the circumstance where technology enables a mining operation to move and/or completely consume a Solar System body, such as a comet or a small Near Earth Asteroid.

This paper considers legal and policy issues arising from a Solar System body being moved and/or consumed completely in a mining operation, as well as the consequent economic implications.  Further, the paper will consider the particular complications arising from the lack of widespread acceptance of the Moon Agreement and the possible involvement of private and multinational commercial concerns in such mining activities and if the mineral resources extracted were used for different purposes, ranging from commercial exploitation to exploration or scientific investigation.  The paper will conclude with some relevant suggestions on the adoption and application of more specific legal and policy principles to mining activities in outer space.

Abstract document

IAC-09.E3.P.6.pdf

Manuscript document

(absent)