A new space race in the offing?

As the world is grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and the United States is ina precarious situation, President Donald Trump has passed an executive orderallowing Americans ‘the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, anduse of resources in outer space.’All major spacefaring nations, including the United States of America and India, aresignatories of the Outer Space Treaty 1967. Article II of The Outer Space Treaty,1967, states, ‘Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is notsubject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use oroccupation, or by any other means.’ The Moon Agreement 1979, although ratified byonly 18 countries, the US not being one of them, also prohibits the exploration ofthe moon. The order highlights that US doesn’t consider space as ‘global commons’and further states that the US is not a party to the 1979 Moon Agreement anddoesn’t recognise the Agreement to ‘be an effective or necessary instrument toguide nation-states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in thelong-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or othercelestial bodies.’While the legal opinion on the legitimacy of exploiting outer space by the USA isdivided, the intent of commercial exploration is not entirely new. Over the pastcouple of years, we are seeing increasing interest in asteroid mining andexploitation of space by nation-states. The US Congress had passed the‘Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act’ in 2015 giving its citizens the rightto ‘possess, own, transport, use, and sell the asteroid resource or space resourceobtained.’ NASA’s Artemis Lunar Exploration programme plans to develop a basecamp at the south pole of the moon and build other infrastructure to facilitatelong-term exploration of the moon. Billionaire explorers like Jeff Bezos and ElonMusk, are also looking to reach Mars and other celestial bodies and take advantageof the resources found.Luxembourg, a small European nation, has implemented an even more liberalregime than the US for asteroid mining and harvesting of other resources fromspace. Trump’s executive order is an endorsement of the growing global sentimentand formal recognition of the property rights of private players from the US.Russia has heavily criticised the US, and Trump for the order, stating, ‘attempts toexpropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of otherplanets hardly set the countries (on course for) fruitful cooperation.’ However, weneed to trust actions, not words when we observe sovereign nation-states in theinternational arena. Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has announced plans for a2024 orbiter, a 2028 sample-return mission, and human flights by 2029-30, Chinahas an ambitious lunar programme with its Chang’e missions. Russia and China arealso planning to build a shared data centre for lunar and deep-sea research. It willbe interesting to see whether all these missions are only towards the pursuit ofscience or are there other strategic and economic interests that the countries willundertake.Setting up bases and exploiting and trading resources found in space is also a wayof asserting power in space. Most states now acknowledge space as a new domainof security, and thus are building capabilities to safeguard their interests andproject power. While building defensive capabilities through specialised defencespace agencies is one way, establishing economic avenues through the exploitationof resources and trade is the other way to gain primacy.The Outer Space Treaty, enacted in 1967, in the wake of the cold war and the heightof the space race, has done well to prevent exploitation of space so far. As spaceexploration and travel is becoming cheaper, and there is increased participationfrom private players, we are likely to see new strains in the international order. Wewould observe an increased interest in property rights in space and countriestrying to enable, if not encourage, their private players to harvest resources inspace.The executive order says that the US is looking to negotiate multilateralagreements with foreign states for sustainable operations for the recovery of spaceresources. India needs to be cognisant of the developments in this new ‘space race’.While the Moon Agreement which India has signed but not ratified may prove to bea thorn, India must take prudent measures to ensure that its citizens can reap theeconomic dividends of space exploration while India can safeguard its strategicinterests.(This article was published in the Deccan Herald. The views are of the author's own.)