NEW YORK: Humankind must get away from the Cold War concept of a ‘space race’, even as commercial competition hots up to exploit the potential of the cosmos, the head of the UN agency for outer space affairs (UNOOSA) has told UN News
Marking Friday’s International Day of Human Space Flight, when the former Soviet Union’s Yuri Gagarin reached orbit back in 1961, UNOOSA Director Aarti Holla-Maini said that everybody has a role to play in the peaceful exploration of space – ‘it’s not just for the geeks and the nerds who like engineering.
‘Now, we’re really looking at space science and space exploration and looking for the most innovative and pragmatic approaches to that, and that is why we are seeing more commercial companies getting involved.’
She said the private sector allows national space agencies like NASA in the United States, to spread their risk, keep costs down, be bolder in their ambition and increase the chances of success.
The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is the birthplace of
all space regulation and treaties, ‘which underpin everything that we see happening in the space economy today’, she said, urging a continuation of a ‘global convening dialogue’ in both the public and private sectors.
She said as space debris increases in the Earth’s orbit and beyond, the UN will bring stakeholders together to discuss potential new guidelines for international oversight.
Source: Emirates News Agency
