Good Prospects For Space Co-operation

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29776, 20 March 1962, Page 13

Good Prospects For Space Co-operation

(N 2 .PJI.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, March 19. East and West will begin full-scale efforts in the United Nations this week to make the conquest of space a peaceful, co-operative campaign.

Pledges of goodwill by both President Kennedy and the Soviet Prime Minister (Mr Khrushchev) have spurred optimism that positive results may come from meetings of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which are due to begin this afternoon. Before the session, the chairman, Dr. Frank Matsch, said: “I think the prospects are favourable." He said'the session would test “whether American-Russian co-opera-tion can emerge.” President Kennedy suggested in a letter to Mr Khrushchev made public over the week-end that Soviet and United States representatives on the committee confer privately to work out details for co-operation in space programmes.

ental communications by satellites, and in pooling results of space medical research. All of these questions are expected to come up in the course of the committee’s meetings. The meetings beginning today are not expected to last longer than a week or 10 days. The United States already has taken the first step towards compliance with a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on the outer space question, registering the launching of more than <0 objects that it has sent “into orbit or beyond." Under the resolution, the Secretary-General <U Thant) was instructed to maintain a public registry of such information. So far. the Russians have not followed the American example. Advance indications today were that both the Soviet Union and the United States would have concrete proposals for the committee, but

He proposed the two nations combine in launching weather satellites, operating radio trackers, mapping the earth’s magnetic field, experimenting in intercontin-

neither would say what these might be. One of the questions touched upon by Dr. Matsch was that of keeping the cosmos from developing into what he called a “junkyard." He said advertising concerns were known to have their eyes on outer space, seeing in it a bright new field for the launching of selling devices which would be visible over an entire hemisphere. Informants said there was no doubt that restraints would be imposed against such uses, but they said that formal action would have to be taken to apply these limitations. India was reported recently to be interested in having the committee hear evidence from United States and Soviet astronauts, including Lieutenant-Colonel John H. Glenn and Major Yuri Gagarin, but this idea apparently has been left in abeyance.

Last December 20, the General Assembly unanimously adopted a set of principles which were widely regarded as a good augury for progress.

International law, including the United Nations Charter, applies to outer space and celestial bodies.

Outer space and celestial bodies are free tor exploration and use by states in conformity with international law, and are not subject to national appropriation. t