Political scientists at UBC are shooting for the stars.
UBC Political Science Professor Michael Byers has been awarded a $250,000 grant from the New Frontiers in Research Fund for his project on the Safe and Sustainable Development of Space.
Byers will be collaborating with astrophysicists including UBC Physics and Astronomy Professor and Co-Principal Investigator Aaron Boley. Together, they will analyze high-risk challenges related to humanity’s increasing presence in the solar system, including asteroid mining, debris in Earth’s orbit, and anti-satellite weaponry.
We spoke to Michael Byers about the scope of his new project and what international relations look like beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
UBC Political Science Professor Michael Byers
1) What do safety and sustainability mean when talking about the development of space?
The best way to answer this question might be to provide some examples!
First, we all know what happened to the dinosaurs. Well, nine years from now ‘Apophis’ will pass within 40,000 km of Earth. This 370-meter asteroid does not pose an impact risk, though it will momentarily be closer than communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit. There are thousands of other asteroids and comets that could pose a risk to Earth.
Next year, NASA is sending a spacecraft to an asteroid to test whether it can be deflected. But who should be responsible for vetting the science, assessing the risks, and making decisions in an actual Earth-impact scenario? The U.S. government? The Russian government? The United Nations Security Council? Elon Musk?
Two other spacecraft—from NASA and the Japanese Space Agency—are currently extracting samples from asteroids, both for scientific purposes and to test the viability of asteroid mining. Some asteroids contain ice that could be used to make rocket fuel; others contain rare Earth elements. But asteroid mining could create streams of debris that endanger satellites in Earth’s orbit or future activities on the Moon, with neither location benefiting from the partial protection provided by Earth’s atmosphere. Mining could also change an asteroid’s trajectory and inadvertently steer it toward an Earth impact.
Should national governments be allowed to license and regulate asteroid mining companies on their own? The United States thinks so, though most other countries disagree. What if such a company incorporated in a ‘flag of convenience state’—a country offering minimal regulation and oversight in order to attract foreign companies?
For a second example, think of our satellites, which are already threatened by their own increasing numbers as well as an accumulation of debris such as leftover rockets, defunct satellites, and fragments from in-orbit collisions. These risks will soon increase—SpaceX has already launched the first 420 of a planned 11,800 communications satellites into low Earth orbit. Anti-satellite weapons, including one tested by India last year, can add further debris and thus destroy unintended targets. Yet there are no international rules that specifically govern access to low Earth orbit.
Can existing rules be reinterpreted and applied to these challenges? Could the International Telecommunications Union, which coordinates access to geosynchronous orbit, do the same thing for low Earth orbit? Could domestic courts provide a mechanism for assessing causation, negligence, and damage when collisions occur?
As you can see, there are lots of practical issues of safety and sustainability in space, and a shortage of effective, widely accepted governance mechanisms. This project aims to help the international community address these challenges, and thus support the responsible expansion of human activity beyond this planet.
2) How did you identify the challenges?
Aaron and I were introduced to each other three years ago by Philippe Tortell, the then-director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies. Aaron is an astrophysicist, and about as far away as you could get from my two disciplines: international relations and international law. Before meeting, we had each read the literature on asteroids and space mining and space debris in our respective disciplines. Yet our first discussion revealed that these literatures had overlooked lots of key issues. For instance, there was no mention in the international law or international relations literature on the risks of debris and human-caused changes to the trajectories of asteroids due to mining, notwithstanding the important role of international institutions, treaties, and ‘soft law’ in addressing other shared risks. However, identifying challenges is only a first step. Aaron and I quickly realized that sustained, fully interdisciplinary research was needed to identify, understand, and solve the complex and increasingly important challenges in space.
3) What steps have you taken so far?
Aaron and I continued learning from each other, and we soon found another collaborator: David Kendall, who served as Director General of Science and Technology at the Canadian Space Agency before becoming Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. David has become central to our research, in part because of his diplomatic experience and connections, and in part because his career has combined space science with the actual practice of international relations.
Two years ago, Aaron, David and I created the Outer Space Institute, a global network of experts from academia, government, industry and civil society working on challenges that demand interdisciplinary research and solutions. Aaron and I became a grant-writing team, which has enabled us to hold international workshops on space debris and space mining and to support a small but growing cohort of undergraduate and graduate students. The New Frontiers Grant will enable us to do more of this. Aaron and I have also been co-authoring, including newspaper articles directed at educating the general public about our research and encouraging governments and industry to take necessary actions. We published an article in the Los Angeles Times that was essentially an open letter to Elon Musk, calling on him to reduce light pollution from his mega-constellation of satellites. Twice this year, we published long essays in the Saturday opinion section of Globe and Mail that called on the Canadian government to seize the opportunity for global leadership on space debris and space mining. Now, we are taking on the even greater challenge of writing a book on all this for Cambridge University Press.
4) This project will involve considerable gender and ethnic diversity. How will these be addressed in the project?
As a global network of experts, the Outer Space Institute has ensured gender and ethnic diversity. Essentially, we identify the very best people from around the planet, and many of these people are either women, or from the developing world, or both. We are not studying how Canada, or any other country, can expand safely and sustainably into space. We are studying how humanity can do so.
