Large nations fail to register satellites

BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- The United States, China and most other major nations with satellites in space have failed to register all of them -- a violation of a Cold War-era U.N. convention intended to keep the arms race from moving into orbit, a Harvard University astronomer said.

Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said in telephone interviews with Reuters on Wednesday and Thursday that nearly all of the omissions were due to administrative error.

He played down any danger that weapons systems were being put in orbit, but singled out the United States, saying the issue was of growing concern as President Bush considers plans for a national missile defense system that could include some space-based systems.

The United States is conducting a sweeping review of its defense capabilities and is considering spending billions of dollars for development of the system.

"I can say the U.S. doesn't have 50 laser battle stations in space, but the more cavalier you are with this registration convention, the harder it is for us to have confidence that we can say that," McDowell said.

"The reason it's an issue is the U.S. is the only country that is going on about putting weapons in space."

The 1975 Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space obligates countries to keep a registry of what they launch and file it with the United Nations.

The United Nations first passed a resolution to keep track of space objects in 1961 and Washington and Moscow started registering satellites in 1962 as the space race heated up. The 1975 convention is an offshoot of the first resolution and created the registry for the objects.

"The reason for the convention ... was for the United States and the Soviet Union to reassure each other that they weren't stashing nukes in space," McDowell said.

At present, the United States is the worst offender in terms of raw numbers, having failed to register 141 of the 2,000 satellite payloads launched since the start of the space age, McDowell said. Of those, he estimated seven were military or spy satellites that Washington deliberately did not register.

Other countries such as China, Germany, France, Italy and Britain have failed to register a higher percentage of their payloads, McDowell said.

Only the Russian Federation is in full compliance, as was the Soviet Union, which registered all its space objects from 1970, McDowell said.

The U.N. Office of Outer Space Affairs in Vienna confirmed that most nations fail to register all their space objects and said administrative error caused most of the omissions.

"It's a technical problem, not a political or strategic problem," said Petr Lama, an official in the Office of Outer Space Affairs. "Speaking of recent things, these are only omissions, those deliberately unregistered are from the Cold War."

But McDowell's data shows China, which has launched about 70 payloads, has failed to register about half and France, which has fired 60 payloads into orbit, has not recorded 15.

Germany has 28 satellites circling the globe and has not registered 16; Britain has launched 40 and not registered 10 and Italy, which has 15 satellites in the sky, has failed to register six, according to the data.

Japan has launched 84 satellites and not recorded 10. Even Canada, with 15 payloads in orbit, has not listed three.

McDowell said that in nearly all cases, there were no nefarious motives behind the lack of registration.

"In those cases I'm quite convinced that it's just incompetence," he said.

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