Fifty Years of Space Law: Basic Decisions and Future Challenges

Space Law is often described as a collection of more or less amusing and unrealistic rules. For society, outer space is more of an imaginary sphere than a concrete space of Public International Law. That is why it is an ambitious project to explain that the international community of States has created a legal order for exploring and using outer space by concluding a binding international treaty. With a duration of 50 years, the Outer Space Treaty is in an advanced age. This special anniversary represents good reason to evaluate basic decisions and to predict future challenges of this modern part of Public International Law. The article explores the recent developments in Space Law and seeks to verify its status within International Law. Comparable to the Law of the Sea, Air Law, and currently Cyber Law, Space Law is the expectable international legal reaction to the fact that flights into outer space became possible, calling for a system of ordering. Together with the space-oriented fields of law mentioned above, Space Law is part of an emerging new International Law of Spaces