Historically, governments have played the major role in initiating and funding space exploration and space applications, including defense systems. The sector of satellite-based telecommunication is the only one where the commercial market started playing a strong role as early as the 1980s. Ever since, this sector developed independently of government funding but Governments continued playing a strong regulatory role, for example by disbanding former national telecommunication monopolies in Europe and by encouraging increased competition. This led in the 1990s to the transformation of Intelsat, Inmarsat and Eutelsat from international government organisations to private sector commercial operators.

Space systems play an important role in sustaining the development, prosperity and security of many nations. As more nations become critically reliant on space systems, questions of maintaining safety and strategic stability in outer space have come to the fore. Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures (TCBMs) for outer space activities have an important role to play in providing clarity about the intentions of States and in articulating norms of behaviour in outer space. TCBMs take several forms. They may be the elaboration of basic principles related to the exploration and use of outer space, political measures related to establishing norms of conduct, information-sharing activities to improve the transparency of outer space activities, operational practices which demonstrate a commitment to mutual cooperation in outer space, or consultative mechanisms. We present an analytical framework for evaluating potential TCBMs and illustrate the application of this framework to examples of potential operational, regulatory, treaty-based and declaratory TCBMs.

Résumé Les activités spatiales sont-elles durables sur le long terme ? La multiplication des acteurs dans l’Espace, la croissance rapide du nombre de satellites, concentrés sur les orbites les plus intéressantes, la prolifération inquiétante des débris spatiaux générés par les lancements et les désintégrations de satellites en fin de vie, les risques de collisions accidentelles ou d’agressions intentionnelles posent la question de la mise en place au plan international de règles de bonne conduite susceptibles d’assurer une meilleure sécurité des activités dans l’Espace. Les initiatives diplomatiques récentes ou en cours sont passées en revue.

The success of space-based systems worldwide, providing services to society and satisfying defence and security needs, has led to a situation where outer space is increasingly crowded. In addition, the rapid proliferation of space debris threatens the safe utilization of outer space on the most commonly used orbits. Beyond the mitigation of the orbital debris threat, additional measures will be needed to ensure the safety and security of activities in outer space for the long-term. This article describes the initiative to introduce a new agenda item in the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), first presented to COPUOS delegations in 2007, which led to a formal decision in 2009. This in turn led to the establishment of a dedicated Working Group of the Scientific and Technical Sub-Committee in 2010, with a work plan leading to a report and associated recommendations in 2014. Some references are made to other initiatives affecting space security, such as the Russia–China draft treaty (PPWT) tabled at the Conference on Disarmament and the EU-proposed Code of Conduct.

The authors examine the principles, goals and guidelines in the new US NSP. While in general favourable to the overall direction of the policy, noting that Europe too has similar goals or, in some cases, should be adopting US ideas, they are sceptical about certain aspects, such as the greater emphasis on commercial partnerships with NASA and the continuing protectionist launch policy. Particular points of concern are the vagueness and lack of clear goals in the human spaceflight programme and the US position on space weaponization at the Conference on Disarmament. Nevertheless, they believe that a similar type of EU-wide policy should be developed by the European Commission. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Within the frame of Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), this paper deals with the development of the new techniques necessary for the xenon monitoring requested by the CTBT. An automatic system called SPALAX™, devoted to the on-site sampling and measurement was developed by French atomic energy commission (CEA). Analytical methods and equipments have been studied at our laboratory, using dual X-γ-spectrometry in order to get independent means with better sensitivity within a robust quality assurance program. In the case of a wide number of potential existing sources and depending on meteorological conditions, several solutions can be arrived at.

A common European defence policy is still at a very preliminary stage, and although some limited progress has recently been made, it is a politically sensitive issue. In contrast to scientific research or large industrial ventures such as aircraft development, where Europe has moved forward rather well, obstacles to further integration in defence and security matters are numerous. Space systems could be used to facilitate such integration as their duplication is costly and so much remains to be done in Europe in this field. A common European ‘vision’ for the role of space systems in security and defence thus needs to be developed. This article reviews the role of space in security and defence missions, the technology and industrial base Europe needs, and its capability and autonomy in achieving access to space. Space system vulnerability and the means of minimizing it are addressed, including measures to prevent the weaponization of space. The possible role of ESA in support of the European Defence Agency for defence space systems development is identified, along with the need for ad hoc organizations for operational exploitation. Ten recommendations are made that would permit progress at the European level, following the path already successfully achieved in the civilian domain.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) plans the installation of an International Monitoring System (IMS) based upon four global networks. Seismic, hydroacoustic and infrasound waves will help detect underground, underwater and atmospheric nuclear tests and will permit their discrimination from natural events. 80 particulate stations will detect radioactive aerosols, this network being completed with a sub-set of 40 stations which will measure rare gases, typically xenon isotopes. 16 IMS laboratories will perform additional analysis mainly by gamma-spectrometry, using the most sensitive methods such as particulate analysis. In order to have the most effective network, modeling was performed by using an inverse method in which the radioactive tracer is transported back from detectors. Examples will be given, regarding the maps of detection probability, background effects of existing xenon or radon, or the decoupling effects. All these tools and means are anticipated to have a complete process of certification, authentication of the data and discrimination capabilities between nuclear test and releases from civilian nuclear industry (reactors, reprocessing plants,). If a State Party identifies events that it feels could be a nuclear explosion, it can ask for clarification and finally it may send a request for an On-Site Inspection. The rights of the State Party and the constraints for the Inspection Team are defined in the Treaty. That leads to limited time, to limited number of inspectors on the site and to precise methods to be authorized. The means and resulting data have to be blinded in order to make sure the confidentiality is observed. Examples of restricting measurements will be given regarding airborne or vehicle mounted spectrometry as well as laboratory analysis. Cooperation with international organizations (WMO, WHO) will be discussed, depending on confidentiality issues.

In preparation for verification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban-Treaty, automated radioxenon monitoring is performed in two distinctive environments: Ottawa and Tahiti. These sites are monitored with SPALAX (Systeme de Prelevement d'air Automatique en Ligne avec l'Analyse des radioXenons) technology, which automatically extracts radioxenon from the atmosphere and measures the activity concentrations of (131m,133m,133,135)Xe. The resulting isotopic concentrations can be useful to discern nuclear explosions from nuclear industry xenon emissions. Ambient radon background, which may adversely impact analyser sensitivity, is discussed. Upper concentration limits are reported for the apparently radioxenon free Tahiti environment. Ottawa has a complex radioxenon background due to proximity to nuclear reactors and medical isotope facilities. Meteorological models suggest that, depending on the wind direction, the radioxenon detected in Ottawa can be characteristic of the normal radioxenon background in the Eastern United States, Europe, and Japan or distinctive due to medical isotope production.

Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) is an idea which originated during a meeting in Baveno, Italy, in May 1998, which generated a call for Europe to get its act together in the field of environmental monitoring from space, to define a well articulated strategy in this area and to build upon its excellent scientific research community, its proven technical prowess in Earth observation from space and its nascent political will to express its objectives in international fora related to climate change and other global environment topics. While Europe was already active in the most advanced areas of global monitoring, its rather uncoordinated efforts (even within the European Commission) lacked visibility and did not appear to fit into a clearly established strategy. The ‘Baveno initiative’ was an attempt to remedy this situation and find a place within a developing ‘European Strategy for Space’, which requires ESA and the European Union to work more closely together. GMES was extended to include the ‘security’ (in its wider sense) aspects of global monitoring, a move that produced a number of questions and misunderstandings, but which allowed many in Europe to realize that monitoring the activities of the Earth’ land masses, oceans and atmosphere do include a security dimension. GMES will eventually incorporate an implementation plan which will call upon various monitoring techniques, ambitious modelling projects and connections with society's more urgent requirements with respect to environmental protection and prevention or reduction of risks related to natural hazards. This will entail significant efforts to inform the user communities and to convince them of the relevance and usefulness of this initiative. It will also provide a sound basis for the European contribution to the new initiative for improved coordination of strategies and systems for Earth observations called for by the July 2003 Earth Observation Summit.

Radioactive xenon monitoring is one of the main technologies used for the detection of underground nuclear explosions. Precise and reliable measurements of 131mXe, 133gXe, 133mXe, and 135gXe are required as part of the International Monitoring System for compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). For the first time, simultaneous testing of four highly sensitive and automated fieldable radioxenon measurement systems has been performed and compared to established laboratory techniques. In addition to an intercomparison of radioxenon monitoring equipment of different design, this paper also presents a set of more than 2000 measurements of activity concentrations of radioactive xenon made in the city of Freiburg, Germany in 2000. The intercomparison experiment showed, that the results from the newly developed systems agree with each other and the equipment fulfills the fundamental requirements for their use in the verification regime of the CTBT. For 24-h measurements, concentrations as low as 0.1mBqm−3 were measured for atmospheric samples ranging in size from 10 to 80m3. The 133Xe activity concentrations detected in the ambient air ranged from below 1mBqm−3 to above 100mBqm−3.

The experience and expertise CNES had accumulated with the SPOT Civil Earth Observation satellites made this institution the ideal Ministry of Defence partner to conduct the HELIOS military Earth Observation programme. After the successful satellites Helios IA (launched on 7 July 1995) and Helios IB (launched on 3 December 1999) the first Helios II launch is currently scheduled for 2003. In the future, a dual civil-military system developed at the European level and using small satellites (less than 1 tonne) should respond to the military needs.

The recent report by an Advisory Panel, The European Commission: Crossroads in Space, highlighted ways in which the EC could increase its role in space activities. In this note the chairman of the panel, Roy Gibson, describes the background to the production of the report and summarizes its main findings.

The theoretical results of a high-order asymptotic solution for the motion of a particle from earth to moon are summarized for the idealized case of the restricted three-body problem. Various definite integrals arising in the theory are evaluated, then used to calculate the elements during close passage to the moon for a set of 108 orbits in the actual earthmoon system. The initial conditions defining these 108 orbits then are used to integrate numerically the equations of motion for the trajectories from earth to moon. Prediction of the orbit during close passage to the moon is chosen as a basis for assessing the accuracy of the theoretical results, and it is shown that the largest errors are less than 4%. HE theoretical aspects of uniformly valid, first-order asymptotic approximations for the motion of a particle in a trajectory originating near a body of relatively large mass (the earth) and passing close to a body of relatively small mass (the moon) has been discussed by Lagerstrom and Kevorkian.13 In Ref. 4, they investigated the numerical aspects of the theory that indicated that the accuracy of the first-order results was quite adequate for mass ratios corresponding to, say, Jupiter and the sun, but rather marginal for the actual Earth-moon system (where JJL, the mass of the moon divided by the mass of the earth-moon system, has the relatively large value of 0.01215). In Ref. 5, Shi and Eckstein have extended the theory of Refs. 1-4 to order ju3/2 and have also included the effects of deviations from the restricted three-body model that become important to this order. The present paper summarizes the theory of Ref. 5 for the limiting case of the planar circular restricted three-body problem. In carrying out this simplification, certain minor errors in the results of Ref. 5 were discovered by the present authors in collaboration with Shi and Eckstein. All necessary corrections are incorporated in the present summary and a corrigendum to Ref. 5 is given in Ref. 6. Also included in this paper is a comparison of 108 theoretically predicted orbits relative to the moon, with corresponding results obtained by numerical integration of the equations of motion, all carried out for the mass ratio M =• 0.01215. It is shown that the theory predicts the eccentricity and longitude of perilune with errors less than 4%, while the semimajor axis and time of flight are predicted with errors less than 1%. It is expected that comparable accuracies will be found in using the general results of Ref. 5, which include the dominant solar effects, a noncircular lunar orbit, and nonplanar particle trajectories.

The SPOT earth observation satellite programme is managed by the "Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales", the French space agency, with participation from Belgium and Sweden. It includes two satellites, SPOT 1 and SPOT 2, which will be launched in 1985 and 1987; two more satellites, SPOT 3 and 4 are planned for 1989 and 1991 in order to provide for a continuous service over 8-10 years. Launched on an heliosynchronous circular orbit at 822 km, the SPOT satellites will carry two identical high resolution electronic scanners with a swath width; 60 km; sampling interval: 10 m in the panchromatic mode (0.5-0,75 ym) and 20 m in the multi- spectral mode (3 bands in the visible and near infrared); optical axis steerable between +27° and -27° from vertical in the plane normal to the orbital plane. With these characteristics and the global coverage provided by two on-board recorders, the SPOT satellites will prove to be useful tools for managers and land planners in all countries. The distribution of its images, organized by the SPOT IMAGE Company, will rely on an operational service allowing users to request observations and to access to archived data.