Creating a space treaty

Aotearoa New Zealand has a developing space industry that employs people from around the motu. Our space industry encompasses:

• people who model atmospheric greenhouse gases and agricultural emissions
• hardware and software engineers for satellites and the systems that monitor them
• revitalisation of traditional Māori astronomical knowledge
• iwi and hapū applying concepts of kaitiakitanga, whakapapa and auahatanga to monitor and improve the whenua
• satellite propulsion engineers
• people who monitor and deal with space debris
• companies that launch payloads into low Earth orbit.

Compared with some countries, Aotearoa is a relative newcomer to the space industry, and our national legislation about the use of space is under consideration. Some industry experts have suggested that a space treaty might be a useful way to set an agreement on how space is used, by whom and when.

So what might a space treaty in Aotearoa look like? How would you make a space treaty?

In this activity, students work through a series of questions and provocative statements to create a space treaty.

By the end of this activity, younger students should be able to:

• discuss why we might need rules or agreements on how we use space
• consider some issues they think are important for regulating space
• describe and explain the expectations that might appear in a space treaty.

In addition, older students should be able to:

• devise their own space treaty features
• critically examine features of a space treaty.

Download the Word file (see link below).