An ICAO for space?

The European Space Agency is this week co-sponsoring an international conference on environmental, human and technical space safety, including related legal and regulatory issues (in Chicago, USA, 14-16 May). The International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), is hosting that second annual conference in the USA this week and is aiming to boost international cooperation in areas such as human spaceflight safety, the legal framework for civil and commercial space activities, space debris mitigation and management of space traffic. The theme is "Space Safety in a Global World." Both organizations are pointing out that Space is an "anything goes" Wild West Frontier in stark contrast to today's mature aviation industry, where an international organization for aviation safety - the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) - has existed for 60 years. IAASS presented a White Book entitled: "An ICAO for Space?" to promote the cause of establishing an international organization for the coordination and regulation of civil space safety matters on the model of the ICAO. "The more we study the situation, the more we find that crew safety and launch flight safety, or space debris and space & air traffic control, cannot be addressed separately. All aspects must be addressed collectively, and we must not ignore the safeguarding of shared resources, such as commercially valuable orbits," says Tommaso Sgobba, current president of the IAASS and Head of the Product Assurance and Safety Office in ESA's Directorate of Human Spaceflight, Microgravity and Exploration, at ESTEC, the Netherlands. "Within just a few years, most of the systems upon which civil aircraft rely for navigation and traffic control will operate from space-based networks. It is vital that we take steps now to cooperate internationally to manage that region of space as a shared resource," he says.