Yuriy SHEMSHUCHENKO: “It has not Turned Out to the Space Wars”

Apparently, since the mankind started the space exploration and it practiced communication with Earthlings, and they felt its impressive possibilities and imagined its endless prospects, one of the areas of law, which is space law, has appeared.
Director of the Koretskiy Institute of State and Law of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, the member of the International Academy of Astronautics, academician Yuriy SHEMSHUCHENKO kindly agreed to answer our questions on space law, which is the most romantic in the legal science, as he says.

International space law attributes the Moon and other celestial bodies to the common heritage of all mankind. It means that individuals cannot use them on their own. According to the Outer Space Treaty, individuals or legal entities can be engaged in the space activities only under the control of the government of their jurisdiction and under the condition that such an activity does not impact the interests of the other states.

The fact is that the air and outer space fields have different legal regimes. According to the Outer Space Treaty, the space is free for research and usage of all the countries. And the airspace is covered with the sovereignty of the corresponding state. Thus, a space object launched from the territory of a country is in the area of the national air law, and then it is in the international space law. Different legal regimes operate during the landing of the space object as well.

And really we have the biggest success in the production of space-rocket products, in particular at SE “Pivdenne” named in honor of M. Yanhel and SE Pivdenmash (Dnipropetrovsk). Ukraine cannot afford having an enclosed system for all elements of research and use of outer space. These issues are solved much easily on the basis of international cooperation, in particular, made by various countries within the framework of the European Space Agency.

Changes for the better have occurred since the foundation of the International Centre for Space Law of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. It has become the country's basic research agency of international and national space law. In the Centre several master's theses have been presented, the first monographs and collections of Space Law have been published, a unique four volume edition “Space Law of the World Countries” has been published and translated into English. There is no doubt that further development of the science of space law will solve practical problems of development and utilization of outer space both on international and national levels.

Svitlana PYSARENKO