Proceedings of the Workshop - United Nations Office for Outer ...

VI Outer Space Treaty can be an important factor for space actors to choose under which States'jurisdiction they will undertake their activities. Authorization and supervision can be donethrough various mechanisms. It will be the discretion of the authorizing State to determine theform of the relative act.Authorization and supervision are State obligations which apply to any kind of spaceactivity, whether entirely taking place in outer space or being only space-related activities likelaunching services, as long as they are performed either by natural or legal persons. In otherwords this means all space activities done under the personal or territorial jurisdiction of therespective State, should be authorised by the State and it should provide for continuingsupervision. At times, the transnational character of space activities may request the authorizationby more than one State. In this case, a State may limit its own responsibility to the areas it doesnot consider sufficiently covered by the authorization granted by another State for the sameactivity. For this purpose, States should reach agreements among themselves such as mutualrecognition agreements and provide for the verification of the authorization given to space-relatedagreements. In the same manner, States should, by all means, reduce the risk inherent in all spaceactivities due to their hazardous nature by strict requirements.The Outer Space Treaty does not obligate States Parties to establish any specific licensingregime; it allows each State to determine its own regulations. It has, however, been recognized ofgreat advantage to create a future uniform licensing regime. The harmonisation of regulatoryregimes on a global scale could be beneficial also in regard to space endeavours, which areundertaken with the participation of more than one State. Uniformity of technical requirementsand common safety standards could be equally of beneficial effect on risk mitigation.The term "appropriate State" in Article VI Outer Space Treaty, referring to the Stateresponsible for the authorization and the continuing supervision, suggests several interpretations.These include the State, which exercises jurisdiction and control over an enterprise of a privatenature, the launching State, the registration State, and the State where the enterprise is legallylocated. To apply this term appropriately, certain consideration should be given to the underlyingintent, which clearly is the policy to foster and to encourage space activities to the greatest extent,done by States and by non-State entities. Pursuing this aim, it is useful to refer to other legalinstruments belonging to the Corpus Iuris Spatialis making a more accurate definition possible.Article 1 (c) of the Liability Convention and Article 1 (b) of the Registration Convention containthe term "launching State", being either the State which launches or procures the launching of aspace object or the State from whose territory or facility a space object is launched.The "registration State" means a launching State on whose registry a space object iscarried. These different approaches to the definition of the notion "appropriate State" could becombined arriving at the conclusion that the notion "launching State" and in the same manner"registration State" cover adequately the concept of "appropriate State".The fact that the "appropriate State" is not specified in the Outer Space Treaty itselfattributes clarifying value to the clause mentioning responsibility for "national activities", fromwhich could follow that the "appropriate State" is the one whose nationality was given to theentity engaged in these activities. Accordingly, this State should take the necessary steps tolicense and control space activities of its private actors. This interpretation should be rejected asnot precisely based upon Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, because the whole body ofinternational space law indicates clearly that the "appropriate State" does not only correspond tothe State of nationality. International space law provides many possible links between States andspace objects. Consequently, also the "launching State" is apt to license and constantly supervise