Paul Dembling, a highly respected lawyer renowned for his role in helping to craft the 1958 National Aeronautics and Space Act (NASA Act), passed away on May 16 according to NASA.

Mr. Dembling was the general counsel to NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and along with other experts, including Eilene Galloway at Congress’s Legislative Reference Service (now the Congressional Research Service), drafted the law that created NASA. He served in several capacities at NASA — as general counsel, head of Legislative Affairs, and Deputy Associate Administrator.

He retired from NASA in 1969. Later he was the general counsel of the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) and after that was in private practice.

He recounted his role in drafting the NASA Act in an interview for NASA’s 50th anniversary magazine as well as in a 2001 oral interview for his alma mater, George Washington University (GWU). At that time he donated his professional papers to GWU’s law library.

The journal Space Policy would like to remind graduate students in space policy and law school students that the deadline for the 2010 Maxim Tarasenko Essay Competition is December 31, 2010. The competition is sponsored by the journal and the Secure World Foundation, with a prize of 500 ($788 at today’s exchange rate), a one-year subscription to the journal, and publication of the winning essay in the journal.

Essays are due to Frances Brown, editor of Space Policy, by December 31, 2010. Complete rules are available in the announcement. The contest honors Maxim Tarasenko, a highly respected Russian space policy analyst and member of Space Policy’s Editorial Board who tragically died in 1999.

During the “Space Day” part of the 3^rd Annual Washington, D.C. Space and Cyber Conference of the University of Nebraska’s College of Law, participants considered the implications of the Obama Administration’s National Space Policy and many pointed to its emphasis on international cooperation.

Speaking at the Military Space Panel, Deborah Plunkett of the Air Force’s Office of the General Counsel characterized space situational awareness (SSA) as “the most legally ripe area of cooperation.” Greater cooperation in SSA — wherein satellite operators would have more knowledge of where other satellites and pieces of debris are located in order to avoid collisions — will have to address a number of challenges, including respecting “historic agreements” on data protection, she said.

Bruce MacDonald, who served as Senior Director of the Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture of the United States, agreed that SSA is a viable area of cooperation. MacDonald, who lauded the inclusion of arms control in the National Space Policy as a “good change,” linked SSA with deterrence, which is, in his view, the appropriate goal of the United States in space: “the more countries know they are [being] observed, the more cautious they’ll be.” Plunkett added that the accountability derived from attribution for anti-satellite (ASAT) attacks or other debris-causing behavior “may impact what people do in space.”

Dean Cheng, Research Fellow at the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, described that assumption as “interesting,” and cautioned that increased SSA or cooperation in that area may not be so easy with actors like China and may not aid deterrence. What were the lessons for China after the 2007 ASAT test, he asked rhetorically. Instead of suffering from this incident, Cheng explained, China learned that there are no consequences to conducting such tests. When considering China, which he described as “a genuine space power”, he asked if knowing more about the behavior of other actors in space would be deterrence or, considering the “asymmetry of interests” between China and the United States, might serve the opposite role.

With major challenges in U.S.-China relations, space cooperation with China – which was not ruled out as a possibility in the new policy – still may be some time off. When asked about cooperating with China in human spaceflight missions, the Deputy Administrator of NASA, Lori Garver, who delivered the afternoon’s keynote speech, joked “I’m so sorry, that’s all the time we have.” She could only add that just like the inclusion of Russia in the International Space Station, “human spaceflight cooperation will not be a NASA decision.”

Her response echoed Cheng’s earlier comments that “whether we can cooperate in space [with China] depends on whether we can cooperate on the ground” and that “cooperation needs to start with baby steps.” The first challenge may prove to be the United States’ own understanding of Chinese activities and motivations, what Cheng described as its “opacity.” Looking to “problems on the horizon,” MacDonald agreed with this description and said that “China is our biggest concern in space…that China will continue to be opaque.” The hope is, he argued, that by showing China that such a stance is counterproductive, it will become “less opaque, more transparent…at least translucent.”

The Secure World Foundation and the Arms Control Association sponsored a seminar yesterday on President Obama’s new national space policy. The organizations plan to post a transcript of the meeting in the near future. In the meantime, DODBuzz reported on it.

Jeff Abramson of the Arms Control Associaion was the moderator. Speakers were:

• Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com
• Ben Basely-Walker, Secure World Foundation
• Bruce McDonald, U.S. Institute of Peace

Also, Jeff Kueter at the Marshall Institute has posted his analysis, including a side-by-side comparison, of the Obama policy compared with President George W. Bush’s 2006 version.

To mark its 50th anniversary this year, the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) is hosting several events. The first, a seminar on Space Law and Policy 2010, was held two weeks ago in Washington, DC. The next event will be in conjunction with the IISL Colloquium in Prague, the Czech Republic, as part of the International Astronautical Congress from September 27-October 1, 2010.

The “Nandasiri Jasentuliyana Keynote Lecture on Space Law,” named in honor of the immediate past president of the IISL, will consist of three lectures on the history of the IISL, the history of space law, and the history of two of the early pioneers of space law (Prof. V. Mandl and Prof. A. Meyer). The lectures will be followed by a Young Scholars Session.

The IISL also will republish the seminal 1972 book on space law by the late Judge Manfred Lachs, a former IISL President and President of the International Court of Justice.

For more information on these and other 50th anniversary events, visit IISL’s website.