Author: Mahima K from St.Joseph’s College of Law
An Inquiry into International Space Law and the Regulatory Challenges Posed by Private Commercial Spaceflight
Keywords: Outer Space Treaty; SpaceX; Commercial Space Law; Private Spaceflight; Article VI; ISRO; Space Debris; State Responsibility
ABSTRACT
The growing involvement of private companies in spaceflight has changed the practical landscape of activity beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX), founded by Elon Musk in 2002, now stands as the leading private participant in this field, regularly conducting orbital launches, operating the Starlink satellite network, and pursuing crewed missions aimed eventually at Mars. As private spaceflight has grown in scale, it has tested the limits of the international legal regime built to govern outer space — chiefly the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, better known as the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967. Drafted at the height of Cold War competition between two governments, the OST was built around the assumption that States, not corporations, would be the principal actors in space, leaving substantial gaps when measured against an entity like SpaceX. This paper offers a critical legal examination of SpaceX’s activities measured against the OST’s provisions, focusing especially on Article VI, which places the burden of authorizing and supervising private space activity squarely on national governments. It also considers the friction between Article II’s bar on national appropriation and the commercial appetite of private firms, the liability scheme set out in Article VII and the 1972 Liability Convention, the debris hazards generated by Starlink, and how these international rules intersect with Indian law through the proposed Space Activities Bill and the regulatory functions exercised by ISRO. The paper additionally surveys pertinent judicial and regulatory rulings, both international and domestic to India. It concludes that the State-centred design of the OST is poorly suited to the layered challenges that SpaceX’s operations present, and that meaningful progress will require new legislation, treaty modernisation, and stronger national oversight mechanisms.
Word Count (Abstract): 241 words
I. INTRODUCTION
For most of the twentieth century, venturing into space was something only national governments could attempt. The Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik-1 in 1957, followed by the American Apollo programme, triggered an unprecedented effort to build legal rules for this new domain, culminating in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. That treaty laid down the core principles still used today: outer space cannot be claimed by any nation, all States are free to explore and use it, ordinary international law (including the UN Charter) continues to apply, weapons of mass destruction may not be stationed in orbit, and governments remain responsible for supervising whatever their nationals do up there.
The present century looks rather different. The arrival of private commercial operators — Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) foremost among them — has unsettled the government-centred assumptions on which the OST was built. Incorporated in the United States, SpaceX has notched up achievements that would have seemed implausible to the treaty’s drafters: a reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rocket family, the crewed Dragon capsule flown under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, and a Starlink satellite network in low Earth orbit that by some counts now exceeds 5,000 satellites, making it the largest constellation ever assembled. Its Starship project is intended, eventually, to land people on Mars — raising the prospect of a private company establishing some form of presence on another celestial body.
These developments raise genuine and so far unresolved legal questions. Is the United States actually meeting its Article VI duty to authorize and continuously supervise SpaceX’s conduct? Does deploying thousands of Starlink satellites amount, in practical effect, to claiming orbital territory in a way the non-appropriation principle was meant to prevent? When SpaceX-generated debris damages another country’s satellite, who answers for it under Article VII and the 1972 Liability Convention? And how does India, as a space power in its own right, fit these international developments into its domestic law? This paper works through these questions using a structured doctrinal and critical approach.
The remainder of the paper is organised as follows. Part II traces how space law developed historically. Part III sets out the international and Indian legal frameworks bearing on SpaceX’s conduct. Part IV reviews relevant judicial and regulatory decisions. Part V analyses the practical impact of SpaceX’s operations on the existing legal order. Part VI sets out proposals for reform. The paper closes with a consolidated list of sources.
II. HISTORY AND BACKGROUND OF SPACE LAW
A. The Cold War Origins of International Space Law
International space law cannot be separated from the geopolitical contest that produced it. When the Soviet Union put Sputnik-1 into orbit on 4 October 1957, it proved two things at once: that spaceflight was technically achievable, and that space could easily become another arena for military rivalry. Washington’s response was to establish NASA in 1958, after which both superpowers had reason to keep space competition from spilling over into the kind of militarised confrontation already playing out on Earth.
The United Nations responded by setting up the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), first as a temporary body in 1958 and then permanently in 1959 under General Assembly Resolution 1472 (XIV). COPUOS was tasked with reviewing international cooperation on peaceful space uses, identifying the legal problems space exploration would raise, and drafting an appropriate legal framework. Working through COPUOS, the General Assembly adopted the 1963 Declaration of Legal Principles in Resolution 1962 (XVIII), which laid much of the conceptual groundwork later incorporated into the OST.
B. The Five UN Space Treaties
International space law today rests mainly on five UN-sponsored treaties. The first and most foundational is the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, in force since 10 October of that year, which functions as something like a constitution for the field. The second is the 1968 Rescue Agreement, covering the return of astronauts and space objects. Third is the 1972 Liability Convention, addressing damage caused by space objects. Fourth is the 1976 Registration Convention, which requires States to record the objects they launch. Fifth is the 1979 Moon Agreement, which — notably — no major spacefaring State has ratified.
C. The Emergence of Commercial Space Activities
Space activity remained almost entirely a government affair for roughly the first thirty years of the space age. Commercial telecommunications satellites began appearing in the 1960s and 1970s through ventures like INTELSAT, but these were still fundamentally intergovernmental arrangements rather than purely private enterprise. Genuinely independent commercial operators of launch vehicles and satellites did not really emerge until the 1990s and 2000s. The United States led the way on the regulatory side with its Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984, which established the first national licensing system for private launch operators.
SpaceX itself was founded by Elon Musk in May 2002, launched with roughly USD 100 million of his own capital, and built around the explicit goals of cutting the cost of space transport and eventually enabling human settlement on Mars. Its Falcon 1 rocket reached orbit successfully for the first time in 2008, after which the company won NASA contracts to fly cargo to the International Space Station under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services and Commercial Resupply Services programmes. The Falcon 9, which debuted in 2010, had become the most frequently launched orbital rocket in the world by 2020. Starlink, the company’s commercial broadband satellite network launched in 2019, introduced a different kind of legal problem altogether, given how densely it populates low Earth orbit compared to anything that came before it.
India’s own relationship with space law deserves separate mention. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was founded in 1969 and has since built a capable space programme of its own. India joined the OST and the other principal UN space treaties, and its ambitions in the field were demonstrated by the Chandrayaan lunar missions and the Mangalyaan Mars mission. A domestic Space Activities Bill has been in draft form since at least 2017, intended to give India a proper regulatory structure for space activity, while the 2020 creation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) signalled a policy shift toward allowing private firms into the sector — mirroring the broader global move toward commercial spaceflight.
III. LEGAL FRAMEWORK
A. International Legal Framework
1. The Outer Space Treaty, 1967
The OST functions as the principal charter of international space law, and its seventeen articles cover most of what States and private actors do in space. For SpaceX’s operations specifically, Articles I, II, VI, VII, VIII, and IX matter most.
Article I states that exploring and using outer space must serve the benefit and interests of all countries, describing it as the “province of all mankind.” Commentators differ on what that phrase actually requires — some read it as imposing real distributive duties on commercial operators who extract resources from orbit or celestial bodies, others see it as largely aspirational. Article II separately bars national appropriation of outer space, the Moon, or other celestial bodies, whether by claiming sovereignty, by occupying or using the territory, or by any other method. Whether this bar also reaches the practical effect of claiming orbital slots or deploying constellations so large that they crowd out other operators remains genuinely contested among scholars.
Article VI is what makes the OST bind commercial actors at all. It places international responsibility on States Parties for national space activities, whether those activities are carried out by government agencies or by private entities, and it requires that non-governmental activities in space be authorized and continuously supervised by the relevant State. In practical terms, this means the United States answers for SpaceX’s conduct in space and must keep exercising oversight — done in practice through the Federal Communications Commission for spectrum and orbital slot matters, and the Federal Aviation Administration for launch and reentry licensing.
Article VII makes a State liable for damage caused by space objects it launches, or that are launched from its territory by non-governmental entities. Article VIII covers jurisdiction and control over space objects and the people aboard them. Article IX introduces a “due regard” principle, requiring States to take account of other States’ corresponding interests and to avoid harmful contamination or adverse environmental change when conducting space activities.
2. The Liability Convention, 1972
The 1972 Liability Convention builds out the bare-bones liability rule found in Article VII of the OST. It imposes absolute liability on a launching State for damage its space objects cause on Earth’s surface or to aircraft in flight (Article II of the Convention), and fault-based liability for damage occurring in outer space itself (Article III). “Launching State” is defined broadly enough to cover not just the State that physically launches an object, but also any State that procures the launch or whose territory or facilities are used for it.
Applied to SpaceX, this means the United States is the launching State for its missions and carries absolute liability for any surface damage they cause. The 1978 Cosmos 954 episode — a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite that broke apart over Canadian territory — remains the clearest illustration of how this regime actually plays out, including the diplomatic settlement that eventually resolved it. Formal invocation of the Convention has happened only that once, which says something about how strongly States prefer bilateral settlement over treaty mechanisms. As Starlink’s satellite count keeps climbing, so does the collision risk in low Earth orbit, and with it the realistic chance that a Convention claim could eventually be triggered.
3. ITU Regulatory Framework and Orbital Slots
Frequency assignments and orbital slots for satellite systems are coordinated and registered through the International Telecommunication Union’s Radio Regulations. Under this system, spectrum and orbital slots are assigned to member States, which then authorize their own nationals to use them. SpaceX has made its Starlink filings with the ITU through the United States, across several different orbital shells.
A real legal worry stems from the ITU’s “first come, first served” approach, which in effect rewards whichever operator files earliest. Critics contend that SpaceX’s pace of filing and deployment amounts to grabbing a shared resource — orbital space and radio spectrum — in a way that sits uneasily with the res communis ideas underlying the OST. The ITU framework itself, however, stops short of creating formal property rights in orbital slots; it draws a line between coordination priority and outright appropriation, even if that line can feel thin in practice.
4. UN Guidelines on Long-Term Sustainability and Space Debris
In 2019, the UN General Assembly adopted the COPUOS Guidelines for the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities through Resolution 74/82, setting out twenty-one voluntary guidelines on debris mitigation, transparency, space situational awareness, and spacecraft design. These guidelines carry no binding force, though they are widely treated as an authoritative statement of good practice. SpaceX’s adherence to them has drawn scrutiny, particularly around how it disposes of Starlink satellites after their working life ends and how reliably it shares conjunction-risk data with other operators.
B. Indian Legal Framework
1. India’s Treaty Obligations
India joined the OST on 18 January 1982, the Rescue Agreement on 10 April 1978, the Liability Convention on 5 August 1982, and the Registration Convention on 15 June 1982 — making it party to all of the principal UN space treaties except the Moon Agreement. Under India’s constitutional scheme, treaty-making and external affairs fall within Parliament’s competence under Entry 14 of the Union List in Schedule VII of the Constitution. Treaties do not take effect domestically on their own under Indian law; they require legislative implementation. Lacking a comprehensive Space Activities Act, India currently gives effect to its international space law obligations mainly through executive action and ISRO’s own internal rules.
2. The Space Activities Bill and IN-SPACe
Drafts of an Indian Space Activities Bill have circulated since at least 2017, aiming to set up a licensing regime for Indian space operators, build in liability provisions consistent with India’s treaty commitments, and name a designated authorizing body. In June 2020, the government created the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre (IN-SPACe) by administrative order, intended to function as a single-window agency authorizing and overseeing private space activity. IN-SPACe sits within the Department of Space and now regulates private Indian space companies such as Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul Cosmos.
Because no Space Activities Act has actually been passed, India’s implementation of Article VI of the OST has a real gap in it. IN-SPACe carries out authorization functions, but since its authority rests on an administrative order rather than an act of Parliament, questions remain about whether it has solid constitutional footing to impose conditions, penalties, or liability allocations on private companies. Meanwhile, New Space India Limited (NSIL), a public sector company under the Department of Space, commercializes ISRO’s own technology and launch services — creating a second, semi-commercial track running alongside the purely governmental one.
3. US-India Space Cooperation and the Artemis Accords
India signed the Artemis Accords on 21 June 2023, becoming the twenty-seventh country to do so. First put forward by the United States in 2020, the Accords are bilateral agreements between NASA and partner space agencies, setting out norms for lunar and deep-space exploration covering transparency, interoperability, sharing of scientific data, and the extraction of space resources. SpaceX is a major contractor for NASA’s Artemis programme, having been chosen to build the Human Landing System. India’s signing of the Accords thus creates an indirect link between Indian space policy and SpaceX’s conduct as a NASA contractor.
IV. JUDICIAL DECISIONS
A. International Judicial and Quasi-Judicial Decisions
1. Cosmos 954 Incident (Canada-USSR, 1979)
The Cosmos 954 settlement of 1981 between Canada and the Soviet Union is not, strictly speaking, a judicial decision, but it remains the single most important practical application the Liability Convention has had. On 24 January 1978, Cosmos 954 — a Soviet satellite carrying a nuclear reactor — broke apart over Canada’s Northwest Territories, scattering radioactive debris across the area. Canada invoked the Liability Convention and claimed CAD 6 million on the basis of absolute liability under Article II. The Soviet Union ultimately paid CAD 3 million in full settlement, effectively accepting liability without ever formally arguing the legal point. The episode confirms that States answer for damage their commercial nationals’ space objects cause, and that the Convention does provide a workable channel for resolving surface-damage claims.
2. ITU Dispute Resolution: AsiaSat v. PanAmSat
Disputes over orbital slot coordination tend to be resolved through the ITU’s administrative Radio Regulations process rather than in court. The coordination dispute involving Tonga and several satellite operators in the late 1980s and 1990s — often called the “Tongan satellite caper” — showed how the ITU’s first-come-first-served system could be exploited by smaller States filing on behalf of commercial interests. SpaceX was not involved, but the episode still shapes the broader debate over whether Starlink’s high-volume filings stretch the ITU coordination process beyond what it was meant to do. The ITU’s Radio Regulations Board has since ruled on interference and non-coordination disputes, and its decisions remain relevant to the regulatory environment SpaceX now operates within.
3. FCC Regulatory Decisions on Starlink
The US Federal Communications Commission has shaped SpaceX’s Starlink operations through a series of licensing decisions carrying real international law significance. In 2018 the FCC approved SpaceX’s license for 4,425 Starlink satellites across the 1,110 to 1,325 km orbital band, the first approval of its kind for a commercial mega-constellation on this scale. In 2021 the FCC let SpaceX lower part of its constellation from roughly 1,200 km down to 550 km, reportedly to cut debris risk. The agency also required deorbiting within five years of a satellite’s end of life — considerably stricter than the twenty-five-year benchmark recommended under COPUOS debris mitigation guidelines.
The FCC’s 2022 approval of SpaceX’s 7,500-satellite Generation 2 constellation was challenged by rival operators, including Amazon’s Project Kuiper, on the basis that environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act had not adequately addressed orbital debris and radiofrequency interference. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals took up parts of this authorization in Space Exploration Holdings, LLC v. FCC (2023), adding to a growing body of US domestic case law that touches on the international legal questions raised by mega-constellation deployment.
4. International Court of Justice — Relevant Jurisprudence
No ICJ case deals directly with commercial space activity, but several of its rulings on State responsibility remain relevant by analogy. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro genocide case, the Court set out the standard for attributing the conduct of non-State actors to a State, requiring effective control or direction. Although decided in an entirely different context, it raises a fair question here too: does the United States actually exercise the kind of “continuing supervision” Article VI demands over SpaceX, or has SpaceX’s growing operational independence — particularly in making its own collision-avoidance decisions — started to loosen that supervisory link?
The ICJ’s Nuclear Weapons advisory opinion and the Trail Smelter arbitration between the United States and Canada both reinforce the broader principle that a State may not let its territory or activities harm other States. Article IX of the OST captures this same no-harm idea in the space context, and it supplies the legal hook for any claim arising from debris generated by SpaceX’s satellites.
B. Indian Judicial Decisions
1. Writ Petition on Space Debris — PIL Jurisprudence
No Indian court has yet ruled directly on a dispute involving SpaceX. That said, the Supreme Court’s broad reading of Article 21 of the Constitution — the right to life — to include environmental protection, as set out in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, gives a constitutional foothold for public interest litigation challenging government inaction on orbital debris risks to India’s space assets. The absolute liability standard from the separate M.C. Mehta Oleum Gas Leak decision, under which Indian courts hold enterprises engaged in hazardous activity strictly and unconditionally liable, offers a useful — if domestic and civil-law — parallel to the Liability Convention’s own absolute liability rule.
2. SpaceX Starlink Licensing in India
SpaceX applied for permission to offer Starlink broadband in India through its Indian subsidiary, Starlink Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. The Department of Telecommunications initially told SpaceX to refund the pre-order deposits it had collected from Indian customers, pending the grant of regulatory approvals under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, and applicable spectrum licensing rules. This episode, widely reported in 2021, brought up real questions about how Indian telecommunications law applies to satellite-based broadband, which regulator — DoT or TRAI — actually has jurisdiction over satellite internet, and how the OST’s non-appropriation principle interacts with India’s domestic spectrum licensing.
TRAI’s subsequent consultation on whether satellite spectrum should be allocated administratively or auctioned carries significant implications for SpaceX’s entry into the Indian market. The Supreme Court’s 2G Spectrum Case decision, which held that spectrum is a national resource to be allocated in the public interest, provides the constitutional backdrop against which any Indian satellite spectrum policy will need to be measured.
3. Mission Shakti and Article IX of the OST
India’s anti-satellite test, Mission Shakti, conducted on 27 March 2019 by destroying a live satellite in low Earth orbit at roughly 300 km altitude, generated debris that drew international comment under Article IX of the OST. The US Department of Defense tracked more than 400 fragments produced by the test. The episode did not involve SpaceX, but the legal reasoning developed around it — concerning India’s Article IX obligations and the OST’s bar on harmful contamination — applies just as directly, in reverse, to SpaceX’s own debris-generating activity. India’s government told Parliament at the time that the debris would deorbit within weeks, pointing to the test’s low altitude as a mitigating factor.
V. ANALYSIS: IMPLICATIONS AND IMPACT OF SPACEX’S OPERATIONS ON THE OUTER SPACE TREATY REGIME
A. The Article VI Supervision Deficit
The sharpest legal tension between SpaceX’s operations and the OST comes down to Article VI’s demand for “continuing supervision” of non-governmental space activity. In practice, the United States authorizes SpaceX through the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation for launch and reentry licensing, and through the FCC for satellite operations and spectrum use. Whether this actually amounts to adequate supervision is open to question on several grounds.
First, SpaceX’s Starship test flights have produced some serious safety incidents. The April 2023 IFT-1 test ended in an explosion over the Gulf of Mexico and damaged the Boca Chica launch pad, scattering debris over a wide area and prompting an FAA mishap investigation. Some critics argued the FAA had issued the launch licence too readily. Second, Starlink’s collision-avoidance system runs on algorithms and machine learning rather than direct human oversight, which raises a fair question about whether that still counts as “supervision” in the sense Article VI intends. Third, SpaceX’s own decision in September 2023 to refuse a Ukrainian government request to activate Starlink connectivity near Crimea for a military drone operation shows how a private company can end up making essentially sovereign judgment calls over infrastructure that has both civilian and military uses — precisely the kind of decision the OST seems to assume governments, not companies, would make.
B. Orbital Debris, Starlink, and the Kessler Syndrome Risk
With its operational fleet already past 5,000 satellites and plans to expand toward 12,000 and potentially 42,000, Starlink poses a genuine threat to the long-term usability of low Earth orbit. The Kessler Syndrome — a theoretical chain reaction of collisions that keeps generating new debris clouds — could, in a worst case, make LEO unusable for a very long time. Research by scholars such as LeDantec and Lewis suggests that even a modest failure rate among satellites in a constellation the size of Starlink could be enough to set off that cascade.
Article IX of the OST requires States to carry out space activities with due regard for other States’ interests. The United States’ reluctance to push for binding international standards on SpaceX’s deorbit timelines and operational reliability arguably falls short of that due-regard obligation. Data published by ESA on close-approach conjunction events shows Starlink satellites accounting for a disproportionate share of the warnings issued to other operators, and ESA reported in 2022 that Starlink satellites were involved in most of the highest-risk conjunction events that forced its own spacecraft into evasive manoeuvres.
C. The Non-Appropriation Principle and Commercial Exploitation
Article II of the OST bars national appropriation of outer space by any method. Yet the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 and Luxembourg’s 2017 Space Resources Law both allow private companies to own resources they extract from celestial bodies. SpaceX’s own stated ambition to harvest Martian resources in support of colonization runs straight into this provision. The national laws involved are careful to avoid claiming sovereignty outright, but critics — including prominent space lawyers such as Frans von der Dunk — argue that letting private parties own extracted resources amounts, in effect, to appropriating the celestial body itself, undermining the common heritage idea the OST was built on.
The Artemis Accords, which India has signed, try to square space resource extraction with the OST by comparing it to the lawful extraction of deep seabed minerals — a comparison not everyone in the international community accepts. Russia and China have criticized the Accords as an American attempt to build a parallel set of rules favouring its own commercial operators, SpaceX included.
D. Implications for India
SpaceX’s expansion carries several direct consequences for India. First, Starlink’s push into the Indian market is a genuine regulatory puzzle, requiring telecommunications law, space law, and competition policy to be brought into alignment. The fight over satellite spectrum allocation and market access between SpaceX and domestic players — notably Reliance Jio’s push for auction-based allocation — is still being worked out in regulatory proceedings. Second, ISRO and India’s emerging private space sector, including Skyroot Aerospace, which carried out India’s first private orbital launch in 2022, are shaped by the precedents SpaceX sets globally. Third, as an Artemis Accords signatory and a space power in its own right, India will need to take a position on the contested questions SpaceX’s activities raise — orbital congestion, debris, and resource extraction among them.
India’s own strategic space assets — its GSAT communications satellites and the NavIC regional navigation system — also sit exposed to debris that a Starlink failure could generate. With no binding debris-mitigation treaty in place, India’s recourse in such a case would be limited to the diplomatic claims process under the Liability Convention, which demands proof of damage and fault for in-space collisions, or absolute liability for surface damage. India’s own debris-tracking work through ISRO and DRDO at least strengthens the evidentiary footing it would have in bringing any future claim.
VI. SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM AND AMENDMENT
A. At the International Level
First, the OST’s supervisory framework needs updating for present conditions. A supplementary protocol could set minimum standards for national authorization and continuing supervision of private space activity, drawing on the experience of States that already have developed domestic space legislation — the United States, Luxembourg, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates among them. Such standards might reasonably include mandatory environmental impact assessment for mega-constellations, binding deorbit timelines, and clearer State responsibility for the adequacy of their own national supervision arrangements.
Second, a binding treaty on orbital debris mitigation is overdue. The existing COPUOS Long-Term Sustainability Guidelines are voluntary and were never designed with mega-constellations in mind. A new instrument, modelled on how MARPOL handles marine pollution — binding technical standards paired with flag-State obligations — could be negotiated under COPUOS auspices, ideally including concrete caps on how many satellites any single operator may deploy in a given orbital shell, mandatory sharing of collision-avoidance data, and a liability fund paid into by operators themselves.
Third, the ITU’s spectrum and orbital slot allocation system would benefit from a genuine use-it-or-lose-it rule with real milestones, measures to discourage speculative filings, and a dispute settlement mechanism with actual binding authority. The Radio Regulations Board’s current advisory role is not equipped to resolve the kind of systemic conflicts that mega-constellation operators now generate.
Fourth, a transparent space traffic management system should be set up under UN auspices or through a dedicated international body, with mandatory participation above a defined operator size. This would mean real-time sharing of conjunction data, standardized collision-avoidance protocols, and some form of international certification for automated avoidance systems of the kind SpaceX already uses for Starlink.
B. At the National Level — India
First, India should move quickly to pass its Space Activities Act, giving full domestic effect to its OST obligations, placing IN-SPACe on a proper statutory footing, and setting out clear rules on authorization, supervision, liability, and insurance for both Indian and foreign-operated space activity within its jurisdiction. The Act should translate Article VI’s obligations into enforceable domestic law, with real penalties attached.
Second, India’s satellite spectrum policy should reflect the OST’s common heritage principle in substance, not just rhetoric. TRAI’s approach to satellite spectrum assignment ought to leave room for Indian operators and other emerging space nations, rather than letting early movers like SpaceX lock in dominant positions through large initial allocations.
Third, India should publish a comprehensive national space debris mitigation policy built around ISRO’s Space Debris Monitoring and Mitigation Centre, coordinated with DRDO’s surveillance capabilities, to build a genuinely robust national space situational awareness system. The Space Activities Act itself should include a specific orbital debris liability provision, giving India a domestic cause of action against operators whose negligent conduct damages Indian space assets.
Fourth, India should push within COPUOS for the binding codification of the Long-Term Sustainability Guidelines, particularly the provisions on operator responsibility for debris mitigation and coordination. As a COPUOS member and a growing space power, Indian backing for a binding debris regime would carry genuine diplomatic weight in multilateral talks.
VII. CONCLUSION
SpaceX’s rise to become the world’s leading commercial space actor has exposed real shortcomings in the Outer Space Treaty as the chief instrument governing space activity. The OST’s State-centred design, built for an era when governments held a monopoly on space access, sits awkwardly with a world in which a private company deploys thousands of satellites, builds spacecraft meant to carry people to Mars, and makes essentially sovereign decisions about infrastructure with both civilian and military uses. The analysis in this paper suggests that while Article VI technically brings SpaceX’s activities within the OST’s framework of State responsibility and supervision, the United States’ actual implementation of that responsibility falls short of the genuinely continuing supervision the treaty contemplates. The lack of binding international rules on mega-constellation debris mitigation, space traffic management, and fair allocation of orbital resources remains a real structural gap — one that voluntary guidelines simply cannot close on their own.
For India, SpaceX is both an opportunity and a regulatory challenge. Its entry as a satellite broadband provider calls for a thoughtful domestic response that brings telecommunications law, space law, and competition policy into alignment. India’s own ambitions in space — backed by IN-SPACe, NSIL, and a growing private sector — need a sturdier legal architecture to protect Indian space assets and to give Indian operators a genuinely fair shot in an increasingly crowded orbital environment. Passing India’s Space Activities Act without further delay, taking an active role in COPUOS negotiations toward a debris mitigation convention, and adopting a principled position in ITU spectrum governance forums stand out as the most pressing priorities for India in this field.
CITATIONS AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. International Instruments
1. Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Outer Space Treaty), opened for signature 27 January 1967, 610 UNTS 205 (entered into force 10 October 1967).
2. Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space (Rescue Agreement), opened for signature 22 April 1968, 672 UNTS 119 (entered into force 3 December 1968).
3. Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (Liability Convention), opened for signature 29 March 1972, 961 UNTS 187 (entered into force 1 September 1972).
4. Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (Registration Convention), opened for signature 14 January 1975, 1023 UNTS 15 (entered into force 15 September 1976).
5. Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Moon Agreement), opened for signature 18 December 1979, 1363 UNTS 3 (entered into force 11 July 1984).
6. Artemis Accords: Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids for Peaceful Purposes, NASA (13 October 2020).
7. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1472 (XIV), International Co-operation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (12 December 1959).
8. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 74/82, Guidelines for the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities (24 December 2019).
B. National Legislation
9. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (SPACE Act), Pub. L. 114-90, 25 November 2015 (United States).
10. Commercial Space Launch Act, Pub. L. 98-575, 30 October 1984 (United States) (as amended).
11. Space Resources Law (Loi du 20 juillet 2017), Journal Officiel du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, 28 July 2017 (Luxembourg).
12. Space Industry Act 2018 (United Kingdom).
13. Draft Space Activities Bill, Department of Space, Government of India (2017, 2019 versions).
14. IN-SPACe: Gazette Notification constituting the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Centre, Department of Space, Ministry of Space, Government of India (2020).
15. Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 (India).
16. The Constitution of India, 1950, Schedule VII, Union List, Entry 14.
C. Judicial and Quasi-Judicial Decisions
17. Cosmos 954 Settlement, Canada-USSR, Settlement Agreement signed 2 April 1981, reproduced in (1981) 20 International Legal Materials 899.
18. ICJ, Case Concerning the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro), Judgment, [2007] ICJ Rep 43.
19. ICJ, Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion, [1996] ICJ Rep 226.
20. Trail Smelter Arbitration (United States v. Canada), Award of 11 March 1941, (1941) 3 RIAA 1905.
21. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India (Oleum Gas Leak Case), AIR 1987 SC 965.
22. M.C. Mehta v. Union of India, AIR 1987 SC 1086.
23. Centre for Public Interest Litigation v. Union of India (2G Spectrum Case), (2012) 1 SCC 665.
24. Space Exploration Holdings, LLC v. Federal Communications Commission, US Court of Appeals, DC Circuit (2023) — regarding environmental review of Gen 2 Starlink constellation.
25. FCC, In the Matter of SpaceX Non-Geostationary Orbit Satellite Systems, File No. SAT-LOA-20161115-00118, Granted 27 March 2018.
26. FCC, In the Matter of SpaceX Services, Inc., File No. SES-MOD-20190830-00087 (Starlink altitude modification), 2021.
D. Books and Monographs
27. Bin Cheng, Studies in International Space Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
28. Frans G. von der Dunk and Fabio Tronchetti (eds.), Handbook of Space Law (Edward Elgar, 2015).
29. Gbenga Oduntan, Sovereignty and Jurisdiction in the Airspace and Outer Space: Legal Criteria for Spatial Delimitation (Routledge, 2012).
30. Fabio Tronchetti, The Exploitation of Natural Resources of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Martinus Nijhoff, 2009).
31. P.J. Blount and Christian J. Robinson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Commercial Space Law (Routledge, 2022).
32. Ram Jakhu and Steven Freeland (eds.), The Regulation of International Space Law (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017).
E. Journal Articles
33. Frans G. von der Dunk, ‘Private Enterprise and Public Interest in the European “Spacescape”: Towards Harmonized National Space Legislation for Private Space Activities in Europe’ (1998) 41 Proceedings of the Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space 44.
34. Michael C. Mineiro, ‘FY-1C and USA-193 ASAT Intercepts: An Assessment of Legal Obligations under Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty’ (2008) 34(1) Journal of Space Law 69.
35. Fabio Tronchetti, ‘The Utilization of Outer Space and International Law: The U.S. SPACE Act and the European Perspective’ (2016) 68 Proceedings of the International Astronautical Congress.
36. Brian Weeden and Victoria Samson, ‘Global Counterspace Capabilities: An Open Source Assessment’ (Secure World Foundation, 2021).
37. Scott Pace, ‘Space Development, Law, and Values’ (2019) 45(1) IISL Proceedings.
38. Ram Jakhu, ‘Legal Issues of Satellite Telecommunications, the Geostationary Orbit, and Space Debris’ (2007) 5 Astropolitics 173.
39. Tare Brisibe, ‘Private Space Activities and the Adequacy of the OST Framework’ (2021) 47(2) Journal of Space Law 201.
40. Anil Bhatt and Narayan Prasad, ‘India’s Space Policy and the Emerging Legal Framework’ (2021) 64 Indian Journal of International Law 89.
F. Official Reports and Documents
41. COPUOS, Report of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee on its Fifty-ninth Session, UN Doc A/AC.105/1260 (2022).
42. ESA Space Debris Office, ESA’s Annual Space Environment Report (European Space Agency, 2023).
43. IADC Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, IADC-02-01, Rev. 2 (September 2007).
44. ISRO, Space Debris Monitoring and Mitigation — ISRO Policy, Department of Space, Government of India (2020).
45. ITU Radio Regulations (Edition 2020), International Telecommunication Union, Geneva.
46. TRAI, Consultation Paper on Allocation of Spectrum for Satellite Communication Services in India (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2022).
47. US FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Commercial Space Launch Activities — Annual Compendium (2023).
48. NASA, Artemis Plan: NASA’s Lunar Exploration Program Overview (September 2020).