Space: a major legal void

The internet of space is here. SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted this week using a connection provided by the first satellites in his high-speed Starlink constellation, which one day could include... 42,000 mini-satellites.

The idea of putting tens of thousands more satellites into orbit, as compared with the roughly 2,000 that are currently active around the Earth, highlights the fact that space is a legal twilight zone.

Experts debated the subject at length this week in Washington at the 70th International Astronautical Conference.

The treaties that have governed space up until now were written at a time when only a few nations were sending civilian and military satellites into orbit.

Today, any university could decide to launch a mini-satellite. That could yield a legal morass.

Roughly 20,000 objects in space are now big enough -- the size of a fist or about four inches -- to be catalogued.

That list includes everything from upper stages and out-of-service satellites to space junk ..