Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS)
Mr. Coordinator,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. The Candidate Countries Montenegro[*] and Albania*, the country of the Stabilisation and Association Process and potential candidate Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Ukraine and Georgia align themselves with this statement.
I would like to start by congratulating you on your appointment as coordinator of the Subsidiary Body 3 on the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS), which is a core item on the agenda of the Conference on Disarmament. I would like to take this opportunity to identify the elements of priority interest to the EU, as you have suggested in your comprehensive letter of 8 May 2018 with the aim of structuring our debate.
We recall that space is a driver for economic growth and innovations for the benefits of all people. Space activities and technologies contribute to tackling global challenges such as climate change, disaster management, food security, transport development, and the protection of the environment and of scarce resources. Space science and technology also play an important role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
In the European Union, we have developed strong and unique space capacities and industry, allowing us to take part in major space endeavours. The EU, its Member States and the European Space Agency (ESA) together have the second largest budget for space in the world. Our aim is to be an autonomous and cooperative space power.
Both the EU space flagship programmes Galileo / EGNOS and Copernicus have made impressive progress recently. Twenty-two Galileo satellites have already been launched and four more are to come this year. Galileo global satellite navigation system shows our innovative, autonomous and cooperative approach to space. It will be fully operational in 2020.
The EU also funds the EGNOS programme, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, which supports numerous market segments, such as aviation, road, rail, maritime, surveying and mapping, location-based services and precision agriculture.
Copernicus is the long-term EU Earth observation and monitoring programme. It is a user-driven programme of seven dedicated, EU-owned Earth observation satellites - the so-called Sentinels – and of the six Copernicus Services in the fields of atmosphere-, marine- and land-monitoring, climate change, emergency management and security.
Mr. Coordinator,
Space is a global common and it requires global rules. We believe that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and other international space law, as primarily developed in the UN framework, will remain the cornerstone of the global governance of outer space.
The EU and its Member States are highly committed to the issue of the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS). Preventing an arms race in outer space and preventing outer space from becoming an area of conflict is essential to safeguard the long-term use of the space environment for peaceful purposes.
In this context, we stress the importance of Transparency and Confidence Building Measures, providing an important contribution to the security, safety and sustainability of activities in outer space, and the importance of promoting principles of responsible behaviour in outer space in the framework of the UN and other appropriate multilateral fora.
We reiterate our support to the COPUOS Working Group on Long Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities and its Chair Mr. Peter Martinez. We hope that the work of this working group will be successfully completed by June this year by reaching an agreement on a full compendium of guidelines, whose implementation will contribute to the security, safety and sustainability of activities in outer space.
Now that operators are starting to launch constellations composed of hundreds or thousands of satellites, the risk of collisions and subsequent clogging up of orbits due to the resulting debris increases. New technologies of Space Surveillance and Tracking (SST), active space debris removal or service satellites in orbit could play an important role in ensuring the sustainable use of space. We therefore underline the need to foster increased international cooperation, establish standards of responsible behaviour and sustainable use across the full range of space activity, strengthen commitments to non-interference in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, facilitate equitable access to outer space and increase transparency of outer space activities.
We continue to believe that there would be value in agreeing a non-legally binding instrument, potentially to be negotiated within the framework of the UN as a way to deliver these objectives.
Such a political commitment would build upon the COPUOS achievements on the Long Term Sustainability Guidelines and would be complementary to these Guidelines. It would contribute to responsible behaviour and constitute a transparency and confidence building measure in outer space by creating a voluntary mechanism for notification of operations, such as scheduled manoeuvres, which could pose a risk to life or property on the ground, or to the safety of flight of the space objects of other States. Such notification could encompass predicted conjunctions posing an apparent on-orbit collision risk between space objects or between space objects and space debris; advance notice of launch and de-commissioning or servicing of space objects; collisions, break-ups in orbit, and any other destruction of space objects which has taken place generating measurable orbital debris; predicted high-risk re-entry events in which the re-entering space object or residual material from the re-entering space object potentially could cause significant damage or radioactive contamination; and malfunctioning of space objects or loss of control that could result in a significantly increased probability of a high risk re-entry event or in a collision between space objects.
Thank you, Mr. Coordinator
[*] Montenegro and Albania continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.