Liability regime of international space law: Some lessons from international nuclear law

Abstract

Since 1960, the international community has established a plenty of multilateral agreements on liability regime for ultra-hazardous activities, particularly in the area of international nuclear and space law. The liability regime of nuclear damage has imposed compensation exclusively on operators of nuclear installations whether private or State under strict liability principle of the international conventions. Moreover, new changes of international nuclear conventions following Chernobyl incident reflect a significant change of liability for nuclear accidents. Although there was similar incident, called Cosmos 954 case, with nuclear activity, international space law has not developed and remained ambiguous in certain respects, while imposing absolute liability on State actors. This paper, thus, studies whether States, alone, should be liable for all damage from space activities caused by private operator, similar to the liability scheme of international nuclear law. Moreover, vague term in international space law, for instance, damage and other relevant concepts such as space safety standard and international space organization have been taken into account by comparative approach with the terms of international nuclear law.