INTRODUCTION
Outer space is nobody’s property and everybody’s problem. Low Earth orbit – from roughly 200 to 2,000 kilometers altitude – is now so cluttered with dead satellites, spent rocket stages, and collision fragments that scientists warn of a cascading Kessler Syndrome: debris generating more debris until useful orbits become inaccessible for generations. Over 27,000 tracked objects currently circle the Earth, and the untracked population is orders of magnitude larger. Against this backdrop, India’s legal position is publicly committed to sustainability, strategically resistant to binding rules it had no hand in writing, and increasingly aware that its own space ambitions require the very orbital stability it has helped to degrade.
India is simultaneously a rising spacefaring power, a debris creator, and a would-be architect of the rules governing the final frontier. It aims to grow its space economy to USD 44 billion by 2033, operates a growing constellation of communications, navigation, weather, and defence satellites, and has recently opened its space sector to private commercial operators. Its legal position on space debris is therefore a study in carefully managed contradictions – and resolving those contradictions is an increasingly urgent national interest, not merely a matter of international obligation.
THE TREATY ARCHITECTURE INDIA INHERITS
India is a party to all five foundational United Nations space treaties, including the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, the Liability Convention of 1972, and the Registration Convention of 1976.[1][2][3] It thereby accepts the core framework: outer space belongs to all humankind, states bear international responsibility for national space activities including those of private operators, and states are liable for damage caused by their space objects. The critical problem is that none of these instruments were drafted with space debris in mind. The Outer Space Treaty’s ‘due regard’ clause under Article IX and its prohibition on ‘harmful contamination’ create legal obligations whose application to debris is genuinely disputed among scholars and states. The lacunae are vast, and no subsequent binding treaty has filled them.
At the non-binding level, India endorses both the COPUOS Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines of 2007 and all twenty-one Long-Term Sustainability Guidelines adopted in 2019.[4][5] Endorsement without enforcement, however, produces aspiration rather than obligation. The absence of any compliance mechanism means that a state may endorse the guidelines in multilateral forums while maintaining domestic practices that undermine them – a tension that India itself has not fully resolved.
INDIA’S DOMESTIC FRAMEWORK: POLICY WITHOUT STATUTE
Despite being a major spacefaring nation, India still lacks a dedicated national space law. ISRO operates under executive orders rather than parliamentary legislation, and there are no statutory requirements governing debris mitigation, end-of-life disposal norms, or mandatory collision-avoidance protocols for commercial operators. The Indian Space Policy of 2023 and the Norms, Guidelines and Procedures issued by IN-SPACe in 2024 mark the most significant recent advances: commercial operators are now required to share orbital position data regularly and to conduct Launch Collision Avoidance Analysis before each mission.[6][7]
These are operationally meaningful steps. However, they are policy directives, not law. The long-pending Space Activities Bill, which would give IN-SPACe statutory authority and codify private operator liability for debris-related damage, remains unlegislated as of 2026. Until it is enacted, the entire edifice of commercial space regulation rests on administrative instruments that can be revised or withdrawn without parliamentary scrutiny. For a state whose international obligations under the Liability Convention require it to answer for damage caused by all national space activities – including those of private actors – this gap between policy and statute is a structural vulnerability.
MISSION SHAKTI AND THE DEBRIS DILEMMA
No event better encapsulates India’s legal contradictions than Mission Shakti in March 2019, when India destroyed one of its own satellites in low Earth orbit, becoming the fourth nation to demonstrate anti-satellite capability after the United States, Russia, and China.[8] The government distinguished the test from China’s 2007 ASAT demonstration, which generated a persistent debris cloud at a high altitude. India’s test was conducted at approximately 300 kilometres, deliberately low so that fragments would deorbit under atmospheric drag within weeks. The government declared the test ‘clean’ on this basis.
Legal scholars were less persuaded. Generating any debris cloud in proximity to the International Space Station’s operational orbit may not satisfy the Outer Space Treaty’s ‘due regard’ obligation under Article IX, regardless of the altitude at which the test is conducted.[9] India violated no explicit treaty prohibition – the Outer Space Treaty contains no direct ban on ASAT testing – but the broad language of Article IX leaves the question of legal compliance open to credible challenge. The episode illustrates the central difficulty of applying mid-twentieth-century treaty text to twenty-first-century space activities: the law is genuinely uncertain, and uncertainty tends to benefit the actor seeking to justify its conduct.
THE ABSTENTION PATTERN AND INDIA’S NORMATIVE PHILOSOPHY
The most revealing window into India’s legal philosophy on space governance is its United Nations voting record. India abstained on the 2022 resolution calling for a moratorium on debris-generating ASAT tests and again on the 2024 resolution on responsible behaviour in outer space. These abstentions are not indifference to orbital sustainability – India consistently endorses the COPUOS debris mitigation guidelines in the same forums. They reflect a principled resistance to accepting norms designed without India’s co-authorship.
The existing space governance architecture was shaped overwhelmingly by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War; India sees no compelling reason to ratify a normative order it had no hand in constructing, particularly where that order may constrain its own strategic and commercial space capabilities. India wants to be a rule-maker, not a rule-taker. This posture is analytically coherent, and it has a respectable precedent in India’s founding role in the Non-Aligned Movement. It is, however, increasingly difficult to sustain as India becomes one of the world’s major satellite operators – a state whose own infrastructure is now materially at risk from the debris environment that permissive norms help to create.
CONCLUSION
In June 2023, India signed the Artemis Accords – a United States-led framework promoting transparency, interoperability, and responsible space behaviour, including debris mitigation commitments.[10] The Accords sit outside the UN treaty system and are political commitments rather than binding law, but India’s accession signals a strategic willingness to engage with Western-aligned governance frameworks when the terms serve its interests. The same commercial logic drives domestic reform pressure: private operators investing in the Indian space economy require legal predictability on debris liability and end-of-life disposal obligations before they can confidently price risk and attract capital.
The deepest challenge facing India’s legal position is the absence of binding international law on debris. India has the standing and the credibility to lead a push for a treaty-based debris framework within COPUOS, drawing on the same diplomatic capital that made it a founding voice of the Non-Aligned Movement. Whether it will do so depends on resolving an internal tension: between resisting norms it did not author and shaping norms that serve its long-term interest in a usable orbital environment. Three concrete steps would advance this resolution: enactment of the pending Space Activities Bill to give statutory force to debris and liability obligations; development of a national ASAT testing moratorium policy, demonstrating normative leadership ahead of multilateral negotiations; and active engagement at the COPUOS Legal Subcommittee to co-author, rather than merely react to, the next generation of space debris governance instruments.[11]
The legal clarity required – on commercial debris liability, in-orbit servicing licensing, and active debris removal rights – will eventually have to come. India’s communications, navigation, weather forecasting, and defence capabilities all depend on satellites operating in an orbital environment that permissive debris norms progressively degrade. The question is no longer whether India will need binding rules. The question is whether India drafts them, or inherits them.
Author(s) Name: Yogesh Badgujar (Shri Balaji Law College)
References:
[1]Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (Outer Space Treaty) 1967, 610 UNTS 205.
[2]Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (Liability Convention) 1972, 961 UNTS 187.
[3]Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (Registration Convention) 1976, 1023 UNTS 15.
[4]COPUOS Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines, UN Doc A/62/20 (2007).
[5]COPUOS Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities Guidelines, UN Doc A/74/20 (2019).
[6]Indian Space Policy 2023, Department of Space, Government of India.
[7]IN-SPACe Norms, Guidelines and Procedures for Authorisation of Space Activities (NGP 2024), Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre.
[8]Press Information Bureau, Government of India, ‘Mission Shakti’ (27 March 2019).
[9]Sa’id Mosteshar, ‘Anti-Satellite Tests and International Space Law’ (2019) London Institute of Space Policy and Law.
[10]Artemis Accords: Principles for Cooperation in the Civil Exploration and Use of the Moon, Mars, Comets, and Asteroids (2020); India accession June 2023.