Outer Space Committee: environmental monitoring, UNISPACE III discussed.

• Position: UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space - United Nations developments

Use of space technology for protecting the Earth and space environment, particularly environmental monitoring for sustainable development to follow up recommendations of the June 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, was highlighted by the Commitee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, as it held its thirty-sixth session (7-18 June, New York).

Wider use of such technology, it was agreed, could be significantly promoted through the UN Programme on Space Applications, and the Committee asked its Scientific and Technical Subcommittee to examine how to expand cooperation in that area.

Developing countries emphasized the need for greater efforts to enable them to use space technology for economic and social development, and suggested that a third UN Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UNISPACE III) would be a suitable forum to address those issues. India offered to host the event.

More attention should be given to the problem of space debris and the risk of their collisions with spacecraft, the Committee stressed. it noted with satisfaction the 1992 adoption by the General Assembly of a set of principles relevant to the use of nuclear power sources in outer space.

In keeping with the Assembly's recognition that new applications of nuclear power sources would be emerging, the Committee began a review of the principles. Member States were invited to report on the safety of nuclear-powered satellites and on the danger of their collisions with space debris.

Committee Chairman Peter Hohenfellner of Austria said that 30 years after the launching of the first geostationary communications satellite, space technology had become indispensable to international communications. A recent example was the use of satellites to transmit medical data and images of injured Somalis to specialists in the United States as part of the UN operation in Somalia.

The UN had also used the satellite system in its peace-keeping duties in Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia. Space applications had been used to locate missing people such as fishermen, and satellite navigation had improved air traffic control.

Since the international Space Year in 1992, there had been increased international cooperation in space. This year - 1993 - was the thirtieth anniversary of the first space flight by a woman; of the 292 persons who had orbited the earth, 22 were women.

It was reported that regional centres for space science and technology education in...