A Space Policy and Law Symposium at the University of Portsmouth

Notes on a fascinating day by Adam D.A. Manning

Earlier in the year, I was delighted to be invited to a symposium on Space Policy and Law at the University of Portsmouth by a former colleague, Sarah Atkins, now a senior lecturer at the University.  There was a warm welcome for guests and lots of networking prior to the commencement of the symposium, and I was pleased to make the acquaintance of someone who I had previously been in contact with through, as I still insist on calling it, twitter, Dr. Thomas Cheney.  Dr. Cheney’s work focuses on the legal context of space resources, exploration and settlement and he was one of the speakers during the symposium.

I was also pleased to meet Dr. Colin Baldwin, the Executive Director of UKSpace, the Space Trade Association, and the Chief Executive Officer of KISPE, John Paffett. KISPE is an engineering, system design and implementation company, working in the space, telecommunications and electronics fields.  There was an interesting discussion about the possible interactions of freeports and spaceports in the UK.

One fascinating aspect of Space Law, and the way it has developed at the international level, is the role of the United Nations and how this has changed over the decades since the Outer Space Treaty in the late 1960s. Dr. Cheney’s view was that this was in large part due to the ending of the Cold War and the subsequent alteration to the geopolitical structure. 

One of the speakers in the afternoon was a wonderful friend of mine, Chris Newman, Professor of Space Law and Policy at Northumbria University, who I had met some years previously at the British Interplanetary Society.  Professor Newman’s talk was on regulation and on-orbit tracking, and it was a pleasure as always to hear such a good speaker.  

It had been a fascinating day, and I learned a great deal, including insights into the Space Mission Incubator at the University of Portsmouth, and Space South Central, a partnership between industry and academia, designed to accelerate space business growth and foster an environment of innovation. Special thanks to Sarah Atkins for the invitation and my friend Gabor Kovacs for kindly thinking of me in this regard and putting us in touch.