U.N. Outer Space Conference
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the peaceful use
of outer space Monday as the United Nations opened a
conference on space technology and exploration. "Above
all we must guard against the misuse of outer space,"
Annan said at the opening ceremony of Unispace III. "We
must ensure that the fruits of technical progress are made
available to all people in all nations."
"We recognized early on that a legal regime was needed to
prevent it becoming another arena of military confrontation,"
Annan said. "We cannot view the expanse of space as another
battleground for our earthly conflicts."
A major part of Unispace III will be adopting the Vienna
Declaration, which aims to provide international guidelines
for the use and environmental protection of space. Also
addressed will be the cleaning up of space debris, or old
or out-of-order satellites and other parts of spacecraft
that remain in orbit for years after they have last been
usable.
Another aim of the conference is to ensure information from
outer space be accessible to all people, including those
whose countries can't afford costly exploration programs.
A large part of this is to be achieved through joint
development programs between the United Nations and private
industries. For the first time, businesses involved in space
technology are participating in Unispace III. In addition,
acknowledging that governments do not have the kind of money
needed to develop technology in outer space, the United
Nations has invested $1 billion into private industries in
more than 80 countries for developing peaceful uses of outer
space.
The conference also includes a special program aimed at
giving young professionals and university students
interested in space a platform to discuss their visions
with participants.
The most recent Unispace conference was 17 years ago.
Since then, dozens of satellites have been launched and
the U.N. estimates more than 300 could be in orbit by the
year 2006.
This conference ran from July 19 to July 30, 1999.
