Research On The International Legal Liability Caused By Space Debris

The space debris is accompanied by human activities in outer space, and the number is increasing year by year. Tens of thousands of space debris is not only seriously polluting environment of Earth orbit, endangering the safety of spacecraft and astronauts, but also pose a threat to humans and property of the Earth’s surface. At present, the international community has settled the issue of space debris from the technical and legal.There is no special treaty to solute the problem of space debris, but "Outer Space Treaty","Liability Convention" and "Registration Convention" provides some theoretical guidance for their problems. However, with the improvement of technology and the development of outer space activities, it is easy to see that there are some defects on the existing system and we must continue to study and explore the further research on legal liability caused by space debris.The paper has four parts:The first part of this article is mainly on the analysis the definition of space debris and the Legal Liability of space debris. Accordance to the relevant international law, the damage caused by space debris is mainly reflected in two aspects:one as space debris and space objects, aircraft, and the Earth’s surface collision damage; the other one as environmental damage caused by space debris.This article describes the second part of the first article to analysis the legal liability caused by space debris. At first, this article analysis the relevant laws and regulations of the five Convention on the issue of space debris, then it introduces the relevant legislation of the major space powers, including the United States, Russia, France, Finally it summarized the deficiencies and defects of the existing system about the liability caused by space debris.The third part is mainly on the recommendations to solute the problems of space debris, proposing from the following channels to improve:the most appropriate method to solute the problems of unidentifiable debris is market-share regime and it had better to establish some special international treaties to protect the resources and the environment of outer space.The fourth part analyze China’s laws and policies on space debris from the present situation of Chinese space debris problem, then put forward some recommendations to improve the liability system of the Chinese space debris. China should strengthen the domestic space legislation to develop the liability system caused by space debris.