Research On Legal Problems Of Environmental Protection In Outer Space

Compared to the land and ocean, outer space which is providing us human beings endless possibilities and infinite value is a totally new area. With the development of space science and technology, we human beings acquired the opportunity to explore the outer space, which makes us to believe that it is a new field of great value and the outer space will benefit we people who live in the earth.However, there is a serious problem we are facing while exploring the outer space. That is the problem of environment protection in outer space: the accumulation of space junk like the space debris, nuclear leakage comes from man-made satellites which use nuclear energy as its power etc., these potential dangers are burning questions we need to solve urgently. Human beings have paid a heavy price in developing the land and ocean because of ignoring the protection of environment, and it has been taken as an common sense that the develop pattern---taking remedies and measures after polluting the environment---is uneconomic and unreasonable. Thus the design of legal system about environmental protection generally emphasizes on the precaution. Anyway, law related to the environmental protection in outer space is not that perfect, which leaves people lack of guidance in their exploration. This is not good for environmental protection in outer space.This thesis gives a brief analysis to environment protection in outer space, and then interprets the features of the environment protection in outer space as well as the necessity of protecting the environment of outer space; next part is about some primary principles we should follow and some existed laws that can be used to regulate human being’s actions; then, it describes the international legal responsibility and national liability in outer space’s environmental protection, which aims to definitude the responsibility of subjects of international law. At the end of this thesis, it analyzes the shortcomings in legal system of environmental protection in outer space and presents some modified methods toward its deficiencies such as fragmentation, roughness and the phenomenon of “soft law”.