From 29 June to 3 July, Adelaide Law School, in partnership with McGill University (Montreal, Canada), ran the second ‘Strategic Space Law’ course. The course was initially run last year in Montreal and was slightly modified and now run for the first time in Adelaide. The course coordinators were Professor Melissa de Zwart and Associate Professor Dale Stephens of Adelaide and Professor Ram Jakhu from McGill. Wing Commander Duncan Blake from the RAAF also provided key input to the teaching overview.
The course covered both civilian and military uses of space and dealt with issues concerning the space law making process, attention to the five main space law treaties, space power theory, the emerging commercial and private capacities for space access, intellectual property issues relevant to space exploration and activity, satellite control stations, issues of liability, weapons in space, the law relating to use of force and armed conflict, hybrid vehicles, diplomacy and arms export control agreements. Recent commercial activity by companies such as ‘Space X’, run by paypal founder Mr Elon Musk have driven calls for the existing legal framework (designed principally in the 1960s) to be changed to better accommodate new actors and technologies and thus enhance exploration capacity. At the same time, the ability of States to weaponize space has never been more apparent and efforts to regulate these developments have become more pronounced. These themes were fully canvassed throughout the week.
Presenters on the course included experts from the Australian Government (Defence & DFAT), Optus as well as from Universities around Australia and of course Canada (Prof Jakhu and Mr David Chen). The student body comprised both postgraduate as well as undergraduate students and representatives from Government and Industry. It was a highly dynamic course that was capped, at the end, by a field trip to Woomera.
The Woomera Test Range was the centre of the Australian space effort in the1960s and 70s and saw the launch of over 600 rockets in its heyday. During the NASA space programs of the 1960s, Woomera was host to Deep Space Station 41 that played a key role in the success of those programs. More recently the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has been conducting launches at the WTR, most notably the Hayabusa program that collected and returned samples from a passing asteroid. The tour was conducted with the generous support of the Royal Australian Air Force who provided access to the area and provided a highly knowledgeable guide (Mr Lindsay Campbell) who gave a very insightful account of the space related activities of the site.
The course will be repeated in Canada in 2016 before returning to Adelaide again in 2017. Indeed, in 2017 Adelaide will play host to the 68th International Astronautical Congress (only the second time held in Australia) that will see over 3500 delegates attend from around the world representing the worlds space agencies.
Strategic Space Law students
Woomera field trip
Woomera field trip