Domestic (National) Public Space Law of the USA. Success and Challenges of our Time

• Author: Valentyn Halunko
• Position: Doctor of Law, Professor, Research Institute of Public Law (Kyiv, Ukraine)
• Pages: 5-18

Advanced Space Law, Volume 4, 2019 5

Domestic (National) Public Space Law of the USA.

Success and Challenges of our Time

Valentyn Halunko1

Doctor of Law, Professor, Research Institute of Public Law (Kyiv, Ukraine)

E-mail: halunko@i.ua

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1619-5028

The author shows the current objective need to approve the principles and specic norms of domestic

(national) public space law. The purpose of the article is to prove the expediency of considering the

domestic space legislation of the United States, which nowadays consists of ten national laws, to be

the comparative basis for the public space law. The author reveals the denition of domestic (national)

public space law. The author believes that domestic public space law can successfully resolve the issues

of eective and safe use of space by the private sector, the struggle against space debris, the recovery of

asteroid or space resources, etc.

Keywords: asteroid, law, space debris, outer space, national public space law, private space

companies, satellite

Received: September 11, 2019; accepted: October 07, 2019

Advanced Space Law, Volume 4, 2019: 5-18

https://doi.org/10.29202/asl/2019/4/1

Introduction

Today, the development of space law and legislation is gaining momentum and becoming

more relevant, because after the entry into space of private space companies, international law,

which was approved in the middle of the twentieth century, is not able to resolve the challenges

facing the world space community. Most private space companies are registered and operate

in the USA. Moreover, only the US has such a great number of domestic space laws. The

USA reasonably claim the leadership in the eld of national space legislation. They practically

propose their law-making developments as objective models for comparative borrowing by

other states.

One more challenge that is already accepted in the norms of US law is the permit for US

citizens to engage in commercial recovery of an asteroid or space resource, which will grant them

the right to own, transport, use and dispose of it, in accordance with international obligations of

the United States. Also a signicant challenge in this area is the necessity of the analysis of the

basics of military space law and improvement of legislation on space debris and its utilization.

© Halunko, Valentyn, 2019