The Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law has completed another year of groundbreaking work on the evolving law of outer space. The space industry is face-to-face with extraordinary developments, including the commercialization of the International Space Station, resource extraction on celestial bodies, suborbital space tourism, and more. The Global Space Law Center is dedicated to resolve the legal issues that arise in the 21st century.
This year the Center’s online summer course on Space Law attracted another generation of future space lawyers and the Center’s student-staffed Research Council provided critical research support for both international and domestic space law initiatives.
Please join me in congratulating Stephen Robison, Jeffrey Murphy, Brian Asquith for their contributions as members of the GSLC Research Council. Here is a sample of some of the initiatives to which they contributed:
The NASA Advisory Council’s Policy and Regulatory Committee: The committee explored new approached to commercialize the International Space Station.
The Hague International Working Group on the Governance of Space Resources: This initiative is coming to the end of its multi-year effort to establish the “Building Blocks” for an international framework to govern the peaceful and fair exploitation of natural resources in space.
The United Nations Space Learning Group: This UN committee was charged with the challenging question of how best to regulate suborbital commercial space planes – such as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo – which straddle the border between air and space law.
Thank you again to the 2018/2019 member of the Research Council. The members of the 2019/2020 Research Council will be announced shortly and we look forward to another groundbreaking year!
Mark J. Sundahl, Director of the Global Space Law Center