EDITORIAL INFORMATION

This book offers a detailed analysis of the technical aspects of the ever increasing problem of space debris which is cluttering the outer space environment and threatening the future safe use of outer space. All relevant technical aspects to understand the complexity of the issue are treated in Part One. Part Two treats all legal aspects arising from conventional as well as general international law namely, the principle of freedom of exploration and use of outer space; the principle of due-regard; the duty to avoid harmful contamination; the duty to enter into consultations, the consecuences and relevance of international responsability and liability incurred by the extensive proliferation of space debris; the possibility of deorbiting a foreign space object; and space debris as a future agenda item of the UNCOPUOS.

This book is meant to be a guide to the current legal regime regulating space debris. It comes to the conclusion taht the current legal regime will proove insufficient to hamper the creation of future space debris. Therefore this work will definitely be very useful when space debris will become a future agenda item for UNCOPUOS in the legal field. Activities within the United Nations have shown that space debris has already become an issue of great concern to all nations.

(Extracted form the back cover).

GENERAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

-Contents.

-Acknowledgments.

-Preface.

-International Legal Instruments.

-Abbreviations.

-Part One: Technical Aspects.

-Chapter A: Space Debris - Space Object.
-Chapter B: Detection of Space Debris.
-Chapter C: Sources of Space Debris.
-Chapter D: The Debris Population.
-Chapter E: Collision Probability and Harzards Posed to Spaceflight and to the Planet Earth.

-Part Two: Legal Aspects.

-Chapter A: Space Debris as a "Popular Term".
-Chapter B: Conventional Law.
-Chapter C: General International Law.
-Chapter D: International Responsability and Liability.
-Chapter E: Deorbiting of a Foreign Space Object.
-Chapter F: Space Debris as a Future Agenda Item of the UNCOPUOS.

-Annex I: On Orbit Fragmentations.

-Annex II: Charts on Debris Evolution Posibilities.

-Annex III: Dismantel of Space Debris.

-Bibliography.

OUR REVIEW

The peculiar characteristics of Earth, the extent of its atmosphere and the environment surrounding it, have aroused a problem very few people had predicted in 1957, a date when the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, was launched. Indeed, the gradual yet certain accumulation of objects around our planet, some explosions and the phenomenon of exponential growth of space debris, have turned the trip to our orbit into a question of luck. Therefore it is obvious that the adequate measures to solve or at the very least avoid a deterioration of the problem at hand must be taken at once. However -meanwhile, who is responsible for the damage, be it personal or material, this debris can cause? These as well as other questions, even if it appears to be otherwise, imply a number of legal considerations of a difficult nature, not easily answerable.

Despite all this, it is obvious that the time to talk about it is coming, and it must be done seriously. Until this moment comes, nevertheless, a deep legal study is necessary, one of whose best works we have here now. Hacket not only explains the problem in thorough detail, but he also offers numerous viewpoints which will surely become the key to the definition of the future legal frame affecting this question. In this sense, his book is not only appropriate for professional lawyers, but also its text is fluently read, so that it will be adequate for the average reader as well.