Russia will protect the independence of the asteroids
The initiative is motivated by the desire of private companies in the U.S. and Luxembourg to start mining beyond Earth.
Russia will introduce the discussion of the UN draft amendments to the international law on mining resources on asteroids and the moon. The Ministry of foreign Affairs and Roscosmos has developed an implementation agreement (the international agreement on compulsory implementation of the law) to the “outer space Treaty”.
In the case of its adoption is already present in the Treaty a prohibition on the assignment of space objects, including their resources, will be mandatory — without the ability to circumvent international law at the national level.
Earlier, the US and Luxembourg, has allowed its companies to extract the resources and assign them, not proclaiming the right of ownership itself a space object such as an asteroid or the moon. According to experts, ignoring the international norms can lead to conflict — will fight for extraterrestrial resources.
As told “Izvestia” in the Ministry of foreign Affairs, Russia will offer to make it mandatory for all countries, the requirement cannot be attributed to minerals in space. This initiative will be introduced in April 2018 in Vienna at the meeting of the legal Committee of the UN outer space.
Implementation agreement is based on the fundamental principles “of the Treaty on outer space”: on equal access to space, the impossibility of discrimination, nepristoinyi space resources, etc. by Agreement we offer to the world community to impose an international legal mechanism for the implementation of this agreement.Olga Volynskaia Secretary of the legal Department of the MFA of Russia
The question of the revision of the international legislation on the extraction of resources out of the Earth was first raised in 2015. When the United States was adopted the law “On the competitive ability in the field of commercial space launches”.
This document gave the American company the right to extract, assign, possess, transport and sell the resources of other celestial bodies, including asteroids. The U.S. position has caused many objections in other countries.