PARIS: NASA has released a report containing detailed plans for a human mission to Mars. This has been a long-standing goal for NASA and their report outlines the challenges of Mars exploration in three stages. The first, ‘Earth Reliant’, stage focuses on research aboard the International Space Station. The ‘Proving Ground’ stage puts humans deeper into space for research, while remaining a few days from Earth. The ‘Earth Independent’ stage completes the plan by getting humans to the surface of Mars.
NASA is not the only organization preparing to send humans to the red planet. SpaceX, Dennis Tito’s Inspiration Mars Foundation, and Mars One have all expressed an aim to visit and in some cases even colonize Mars.
Before any nations or organizations begin exploring and establishing settlements, ambiguities in international law regarding space exploration and settlement should be clarified and resolved. The potential costs, financial and political, of ignoring this issue of sovereignty in space are too high to allow these mission plans to develop much further.
Current space exploration policy is largely defined by the Outer Space Treaty, written in 1967. This Treaty bars its signatories from installing weapons of mass destruction in space, limits the use of space to peaceful purposes, prohibits any nation from claiming land on any celestial bodies (known as the ‘non-appropriation principle’), and asserts that space is ‘the province of all mankind’.
The Outer Space Treaty was written before humans landed on the Moon, as Cold War tensions mounted, and so is poorly equipped to direct the course of space exploration. Many clauses of this Treaty are undoubtedly necessary, such as the prohibition of weapons of mass destruction, and the use of space for exclusively peaceful purposes. However, the absolute restriction on sovereign claims by the non-appropriation principle could lead to future conflict.
