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The United Nations' activities in the area of space law and the accomplishments of the Outer Space Committee are discussed. Two draft conventions, the draft treaty on the moon and the draft treaty on the registration of space objects are considered. Other issues covered include the direct broadcast by satellite, the boundary between air space and outer space, and remote sensing from space.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established a webinar series on NASA systems engineering standards and practices for the purpose of sharing knowledge in this area. UNOOSA’s “Access to Space for All” initiative provides capacity-building opportunities in space science, technology, and space applications for United Nations member states. Due to the cooperation among established space actors, the United Nations, and emerging space entities, the initiative enables students from developing countries from all over the world to carry out projects using technologies and space applications. Through NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), the four-part webinar series was designed to cover basic systems engineering and project management skills that are fundamental to planning, developing, and implementing an experiment or a space project and that serve as critical knowledge for those engaged in space activities, whether as a designer, builder, or manager of space infrastructure and services. The first series of webinars was convened over the course of November 2023 through February 2024.
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) in collaboration with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) established a webinar series on NASA systems engineering standards and practices for the purpose of sharing knowledge in this area through UNOOSA’s “Access to Space for All” which provides free and accessible educational content. Through NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), the four-part series was designed to cover basic systems engineering and project management skills that are fundamental for planning, developing, and implementing an experiment or a space project, and that serve as critical knowledge for those engaged in space activities, whether as a designer, builder, or manager of space infrastructure and services. This first series of webinars was convened over the course of November 2023 through February 2024. The webinar series was segmented into four one and a half hour webinars which covered topics related to the Fundamentals of Systems Engineering, Requirements and Systems Engineering, System Assembly, Integration and Test, and Spacecraft Handling, as well as an Introduction to the Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI). The agendas for the first three webinars focused on addressing a number of questions relevant to a particular topic. Examples of these questions include: What is systems engineering and what does a systems engineer do? Why does NASA use systems engineering? How do you define requirements for a small spacecraft mission? Why are requirements important to space missions? How are trade studies used to determine parts selection and why are they important? The final webinar of the first series provided interactive discussions and demonstrations of the S3VI tools; shared information on additional webinar opportunities offered by the S3VI; and reviewed databases curated by the S3VI that include the Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI) Knowledge Base Tool, Mission Design Tools, Small Spacecraft Information Search, and the State-of-the-Art (SoA) Small Spacecraft Report. Future webinar series will be conducted with topics are to be determined. The presenter will discuss details related to the first webinar series and future plans for additional series.
United nations and space research
In 2015, all United Nations (UN) Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agenda provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and for the planet, considering our current situation and helping to create a plan. The core of this agenda is a set of seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which represent an urgent call for action by all countries -both developed and developing - in a global partnership. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Systems Engineering Office (SEO) team has recently developed and released a set of innovative notebooks addressing UN SDGs 6.6.1 (spatial extents of water-related ecosystems), 11.3.1 (ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate), and 15.3.1 (proportion of land that is degraded over total land area). These notebooks empower users by providing features that will assist with streamlining analysis ready data retrieval, processing, and visualization. The main contributions in this paper are: (1) briefly describing the framework of the UN SDG notebooks, (2) enumerating the notebooks’ salient features, and (3) discussing current limitations and proposing approaches to overcome these limitations.
The United Nations (U.N.) is continuing its deliberations on the use of nuclear power sources (NPS) in space. Although no complete set of legal principles has yet been agreed upon, certain scientific and technical criteria for the safe design and use of NPS have been accepted. In this respect, it should be noted that in its 1981 report, the Working Group on the Use of Power Sources in Outer Space concluded that power sources can be used safely in outer space, provided that all necessary safety requirements are met. This is also a succinct statement of the U.S. position.
The recommendations of the Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations committee for the Peaceful Uses of Space concerning satellite remote sensing are considered. Detailed studies of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of this committee are discussed with emphasis on three draft proposals submitted to it on remote sensing by (1) France and the USSR, (2) Latin American countries, and (3) the United States.
The paper deals with the efforts of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to reach a consensus on legal principles governing the international use of remote sensing of the earth from space. The proceedings of the Working Group from 1971 to 1974 and the Legal Subcommittee from 1973 to 1980 are presented. Though the Committee has reached agreement on certain points, some key questions remain unresolved relative to dissemination of data and to the need for or method of classifying remote sensing data based on spatial resolution. An appendix of texts and draft principles worked out by COPUOS is also presented.
Problems arising from remote sensing of the earth by satellites have been the subject of indepth research and analysis by the United Nations. Every aspect of this multidisciplinary subject has been explored in more than 100 reports and papers published as UN documents dealing with all the implications of remote sensing: scientific, technological, institutional, political, economic, cultural, and legal. National, regional and international situations have been analyzed, and the General Assembly has passed resolutions requesting that the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space give a high priority to remote sensing. The identification and analysis of issues has been going on for several years, the objective being international agreement on general principles to guide nations in the conduct of their remote sensing activities.
The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE; https://pace.gsfc.nasa.gov) mission, scheduled for launch in January 2024, will extend the continuous high-quality ocean color, atmospheric aerosol, and cloud data records begun by NASA in the late 1990s, building on the heritage of the Coastal Zone Color Scanner (CZCS), Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) (Figure 1). PACE’s global hyperspectral imaging radiometer design concept will enable new discoveries in Earth’s living ocean (Figure 2), such as the diversity of organisms fueling marine food webs and how aquatic ecosystems respond to environmental change. Its instrument payload (Figure 3) will also observe Earth’s atmosphere to study clouds, airborne aerosol particles, and the interactions between the two. Looking at the ocean, clouds, and aerosols together will improve our knowledge of the roles each plays in our evolving planet. Other applications of PACE science data records—from identifying the frequency, extent, and duration of aquatic harmful algal blooms to improving our understanding of air quality—will result in direct economic, recreational, and societal benefits. Ultimately, by extending and expanding NASA’s long record of global Earth satellite observations, the PACE mission will monitor our home planet in new and advanced ways in the coming decade.
The PACE satellite observatory will follow a Sun synchronous, polar orbit at an altitude of 676.5 km with a local 13:00 Equatorial crossing time. Its payload consists of three instruments, a primary hyperspectral imaging radiometer being built at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and two multispectral, multiangle polarimeters, the combination of which advances far beyond heritage capabilities. The Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) offers one-day global coverage with a ground sample distance of 1 km2 at nadir. As described in this OceanShot, this leap in technology will enable improved understanding of aquatic ecosystems and biogeochemistry, as well as provide new information on phytoplankton community composition and improved detection of algal blooms. OCI will be complemented by two small multi-angle polarimeters with spectral ranges that span the visible to near infrared spectral region. When sunlight interacts with clouds or aerosols, it comes away from that interaction changed. By measuring changes in how reflected light oscillates within a geometric plane (i.e., its viewing angle-specific polarization), we can infer useful properties of the clouds or aerosols. This information is crucial to deciphering the way sunlight is reflected and absorbed by our planet and how aerosols affect cloud formation. The polarimeters include the Spectro-polarimeter for Planetary Exploration (SPEXone) and the Hyper Angular Research Polarimeter (HARP2), both of which will significantly improve aerosol and cloud characterizations and provide opportunities for novel ocean color atmospheric correction. (Figure 3). These instruments offer complementary capabilities: SPEXone is hyperspectral, multiangular, and narrow swath to support advanced atmospheric aerosol characterizations, whereas HARP2 is multispectral, hyper-angular, and wide swath to advance cloud property retrievals. In total, the combined PACE instrument suite will revolutionize studies of global biogeochemistry, carbon cycles, and air–sea exchanges in the ocean–atmosphere system.
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The COSPAR Panel on Satellite Dynamics (PSD) is concerned with the determination of the position, velocity and orientation in space of artificial and natural satellites around the Earth or in the outer space. The following report highlighs representative activities of this panel and provides general information on related international aspects.
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The U.S.S.R. State Time and Frequency Service (STFS) is discussed. The STFS is responsible for time and frequency measurement unification both in the field of atomic, TA(SU) and UTC(SU) and universal time UT1(SU) over the whole territory of the U.S.S.R. The U.S.S.R. national time unit keeping over long interval using an ensemble of H-masers is also discussed.
Food systems—encompassing activities in food production, land-use change, supply chains and waste management—contribute significantly to climate change. Recent estimates indicate that food systems produce over 30% of annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (about 20% of CO 2 , 50% of CH 4 , and 75% of N 2 O), with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimating a notably broad range of 23%–42% of global GHG emissions. This paper synthesizes current research on the contributions of food systems to climate change, highlights challenges in quantifying their impact and proposes a harmonized accounting framework for more effective climate action. We recommend that an expert committee aligned with the IPCC develop guidance for food systems emissions accounting in four key areas, including: (1) defining system boundaries and nomenclature; (2) developing protocols to allocate broader sectoral emissions to food systems; (3) prioritizing critical areas for research into activity data and emissions factors; and (4) developing a balanced framework for evaluating the impact of mitigation interventions in light of other food systems imperatives. The committee should be integrated into two key international policy processes—the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Food Systems Summit—to support coordinated action towards global net-zero goals. Guidance from the committee could significantly improve the ability of governments, companies, and researchers to estimate, report, monitor and ultimately reduce the climate impacts of food systems.