NEWS FROM THE ITU SYMPOSIUM ON SMALL SATELLITE REGULATION

摘要

The United Nations Outer Space Treaty's Article 6 includes a Registration Convention mandating that every nation putting something into space register it with the U.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs (OOSA). "The Registration Convention provisions are binding," said Niklas Hedman, chief of OOSA's committee on policy and legal affairs, in a March 2 address to the ITU conference on small-satellite regulation in Prague. The problem is that not many governments appear to care a fig about the Registration Convention. They do not register their satellites. Government and industry officials interviewed here said many of the largest spacefaring nations, including the United States, fail to register their satellites. It is not just military satellites that are not there. Even some of the best-known commercial telecommunications and Earth observation spacecraft are not in the registry. "This has always been the case; no one does it," one government official said. "We have gotten used to it."