Last month, another State Department official said that a UN resolution was one option under consideration to build support for the ASAT ban. “Our goal is that this resolution is adopted with the broadest possible support.” “In the coming weeks, Assistant Secretary Stewart and her team will have extensive consultations at the UN,” Medina said. The resolution, while nonbinding, would be a way for countries to formally signal their support for the proposal.Īt the council meeting, Monica Medina, assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs at the State Department, said her colleague, Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary for the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, would lead the effort to win support for the resolution at the UN, while also discussing it at a meeting this week in Geneva of an “open-ended working group” chartered by the UN to discuss reducing space threats. (As this story was being published, a third country, Japan, announced its intent to join the ban.) Many other countries had expressed support for the concept but had not taken any steps to formally commit to a testing moratorium.Īt the council meeting Friday, Harris announced that the US would introduce a resolution at the UN General Assembly later this month calling for a ban on direct-ascent ASAT tests. Since then, though, only two countries have formally joined the ASAT testing ban: Canada and New Zealand, neither of whom had developed, or planned to develop, such weapons. In April, Harris announced that the US would no longer conduct such tests-not that any were planned-and called on others to join in that moratorium (see “A small ban of ASATs, a giant leap for space security?”, The Space Review, April 25, 2022.) One issue that has consequences for not just national but also international space policy is a ban on testing direct-ascent antisatellite (ASAT) weapons because of the debris they can create. At the council’s first public meeting in nine months-a span that caused to some to wonder what exactly the council was doing-officials rolled out a number of initiatives and announcements on topics ranging from space security to the space workforce. ![]() The lack of style, though, should not be confused with a lack of substance. That presentation made the National Space Council meeting look like a local school board meeting on public access TV. When the council heard testimony from several panels of witnesses, who faced the council, the online audience could only see the backs of the heads. Those on the far left side, for example, could only be seen from the side-if they could be seen at all. That worked fine for people sitting near the center of the angled table where participants sat, like Vice President Kamala Harris, but less so for people on the sides. The webcast, run by the White House and simulcast on NASA TV, apparently had just one camera to work with for the event. What got less attention, though, was how the meeting itself was presented to those tuning in online. Last Friday’s meeting of the council, at the Johnson Space Center, was no exception, with hardware like an Orion mockup clearly visible in the background. ![]() (The council returned there nearly two years later, this time at the other end of the orbiter.) Many others have used space hardware of some kind as background, a visual reminder that this is the National Space Council.Ī UN resolution “would allow countries to go on record regarding their support, creating that shared agreement among the majority of UN member states, while increasing political pressure on countries that have plans for future ASAT tests,” said Desautels. The first, in October 2017, was held at the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center, with the nose of the shuttle Discovery as the backdrop. Most meetings of the National Space Council since it was revived five years ago have paid at least some attention to optics and visuals.
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