• The Korean Journal of Air & Space Law and Policy
• /
• v.24 no.1
• /
• pp.153-194
• /
• 2009

The resources of outer space are for the common exploitation of mankind, and it is a common responsibility of mankind to protect the outer space environment. With the rapid development of space science and technology, and especially with the busy space activities of some major space powers, environmental contamination or space debris is steadily increasing in quantity and has brought grave potential threats and actual damage to the outer space environment and human activities in space. Especially We must mitigate and seek out a solution to remove space debris which poses a threat directly to man's exploitation and use of outer space activities in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and in the Geostationary Orbit (GEO), through international cooperation and agreement in the fields of space science, economics, politics and law, in order to safeguard the life and property of mankind and protect the earth's environment. While the issue of space debris has been the subject of scientific study and discussion for some time now, it has yet to be fully addressed within the context of an international legal framework. During the earlier stages of the space age, which began in the late 1950s, the focus of international lawmakers and diplomats was the establishment of basic rules which sought to define the legal nature of outer space and set out the parameters for space activities and the nature and scope of activities carried out in outer space were quite limited. Consequently, environmental issues and the risks that might arise from the generation of space debris did not receive priority attention within the context of the development international space law. In recent years, however, the world has seen dramatic advances in technology and increases in the type and number of space-related activities which are being carried out. In addition, the number of actors in this field has exploded from two highly developed States to a vast array of different States, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, including private industry. Therefore, the number of artificial objects in the near-Earth space is continually increasing. As has been previously mentioned, COPUOS was the entity that created the existing five treaties, and five sets of legal Principles, which form the core of space law, and COPUOS is clearly the most appropriate entity to oversee the creation of this regulatory body for the outer space environmental problem. This idea has been proposed by various States and also at the ILA Conference in Buenos Aires. The ILA Conference in Buenos Aires produced an extensive proposal for such a regulatory regime, dealing with space debris issues in legal terms This article seeks to discuss the status of international law as it relates to outer space environmental problem and space debris and indicate a course of action which might be taken by the international community to develop a legal framework which can adequately cope with the complexity of issues that have recently been recognized. In Section Ⅱ,Ⅲ and IV of this article discuss the current status of international space law, and the extent to which some of the issues raised by earth and space environment are accounted for within the existing United Nations multilateral treaties. Section V and VI discuss the scope and nature of space debris issues as they emerged from the recent multi-year study carried out by the ILA, Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, Legal Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space ("COPUOS") as a prelude to the matters that will require the attention of international lawmakers in the future. Finally, analyzes the difficulties inherent in the future regulation and control of space debris and the activities to protect the earth's environment. and indicates a possible course of action which could well provide, at the least, a partial solution to this complex challenge.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.75-82
• /
• 2009

In this parer, we propose a new way of improving DGNSS service using combination of multiple SBAS information. Because SBAS uses Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites, it has very large coverage but it can be unavailable in urban canyon because of visibility problem. R. Chen solved this problem by creating Virtual Reference Stations (VRS) using the SBAS signal [1]. VRS converts SBAS signal to RTCM signals corresponding its location, and broadcast the converted RTCM signals over the wireless internet. This method can solve the visibility problem cost effectively. Furthermore it can solve DGNSS coverage problem by creating just a transmitter instead of a reference station. Developing above method, this paper proposes the methods that integrate two or more SEAS signals into one RTCM signal and broadcast it. In Korea, MSAS signal is available even though it is not officially certified for Korean users. As a Korean own SBAS-like system, there is the internet-based KWTB (Korean WADGPS Test Bed) which we developed and released at ION GNSS 2006. As a result, virtually two different SBAS corrections are available in Korea. In this paper, we propose the integration methods for these two independent SBAS corrections and present the test results using the actual measurements from the two systems. We present the detailed algorithm for these two methods and analyze the features and performances of them. To verify the proposed methods, we conduct the experiment using the logged SBAS corrections from the two systems and the RINEX data logged at Dokdo monitoring station in Korea. The preliminary test results showed the improved performance compared to the results from two independent systems, which shows the potential of our proposed methods. In the future, the newly developed SBASs will be available and the places which can access the multiple SBAS signals will increase. At that time, the integration or combination methods of two or more SBASs will become more important. Our proposed methods can be one of the useful solutions for that. As an additional research, we need to extend this research to the system level integration such as the concept of the decentralized W ADGPS.