Russia is going to submit for consideration by the UN next year the issue of amending the Outer Space Treaty and introducing into it at the legislative level a ban on the extraction of useful resources on asteroids and the Moon for all countries. The corresponding amendment (an international agreement on the mandatory implementation of the law) was developed by the state corporation "Roscosmos" jointly with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, according to the newspaper "Izvestia".
“As the Foreign Ministry told Izvestia, Russia will propose to make it mandatory for all countries to demand that it is impossible to misappropriate minerals in space. Such an initiative will be introduced in April 2018 in Vienna at a meeting of the UN legal committee on outer space,”the article of the information publisher says.
"The implementation agreement is based on the fundamental principles of the" Treaty on Outer Space ": on equal access to space, the impossibility of discrimination, non-appropriation of space resources, etc. By the agreement, we propose to the world community to introduce an international legal mechanism for the implementation of this treaty," the publication quotes the second Olga Volynskaya, Secretary of the Legal Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The publication notes that the question of revising international legislation on the extraction of minerals outside the Earth was already raised in 2015. Then the United States passed the Law on Competitiveness in the Field of Commercial and Space Launches. This document gave American companies the right to extract, appropriate, possess, transport and sell the resources of various celestial bodies, including asteroids. Since the treaty was adopted unilaterally, it caused many objections in other countries.
A similar law "On the legalization of industrial mining in an airless space by private companies" was adopted in 2017 in Luxembourg. The law allows private companies, without claiming ownership of a space object, to obtain the right to own the minerals contained in this space object. The preparation of documents related to laws has also begun in Japan and the UAE.
According to Roscosmos, the national laws of the United States and Luxembourg compromise international space law.
“If we are guided by the basic principles of international cooperation - and these are mutual respect, mutual benefit, conflict-freeness, compromise and the rule of law - it is understandable: a unilateral solution of the issue by individual states can lead to a negative situation,” the press service of the Russian State Space Corporation said.
In addition, it is reported that a program has been prepared in Russia that provides for the construction of a lunar base and regulates the extraction of minerals on a natural satellite of our planet only for scientific purposes, as well as to ensure the life of the colonists and arriving crews. We are talking, for example, about the extraction of ice to obtain water and oxygen. At the same time, according to the program, any commercial activity should be banned, which will fully comply with the Outer Space Treaty.
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