DOI: 10.18738/t8/nbwwwz
title: Replication Data for: Transparency and Accountability in Space Domain Awareness: Demonstrating ASTRIAGraph's Capabilities with the United Nations Registry Data

description: &lt;h3&gt;United Nations Objects Launched into Outer Space Register Data&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Under the purview of the Office for Outer Space Affairs UNOOSA, The United Nations maintains a Register of Objects Launched into Outer Space (a.k.a. Anthropogenic Space Objects or ASOs) for purposes of assessing peaceful uses of outer space. Maintained since 1962, it was established as a Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space in 1976, by which abiding States and international intergovernmental organizations have to implement their own national registries and contribute information to the United Nations Register. UNOOSA is required to publicly disseminate the information provided by States and international intergovernmental organizations about their space objects. In tandem with international space law, the register is useful to identify which States bear "international responsibility and liability" for ASO/s. We use this dataset to implement a case study related to the themes of transparency and accountability. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;The United Nations Registration Data Case Study in ASTRIAGraph&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Our motivation for this case study is to provide data solutions to trans-disciplinary problems in space safety, security, and sustainability. We measure our progress against these solutions by assessing to what extent our research makes space more transparent, predictable, and develops a body of evidence upon which space actors can be held accountable for their behavior(s). Our ASO digital library of the UN space object registry and index contributes to transparency and accountability. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Within ASTRIAGraph we maintain an up-to-date dictionary of ASOs registered and reflected in the UN registry and index websites. The data is gathered, curated, ingested, and organized within ASTRIAGraph in relation to questions we need to answer. Among other inquiries, using this data we can visualize registered space objects, identify ASO's Launch States’ liability, and assess trends in the registration patterns of these Launch States. Using different fields from the registration information, we calculate the ranking of Launch States in relation to registration promptness. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h3&gt;The Data&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The two curated sets of data included in this submission are: &lt;p/&gt;
A) allUNregisteredObjects.json: Is the integrated UN register data which includes information from the Online Index, and data extracted from the pdf documents submitted to the registry by States. To acquire the data in this format, we devised and instantiated a process of data retrieval and scrubbing. We began with the acquisition of the space object data catalogued on the UNOOSA website index, along with acquiring the PDFs for the registration documents submitted by the States. Once the files have been gathered, we employ python code to extract all of the raw data from the PDFs into "convertedJSONs". However, the documents have a large variety of formats, data labels, and even different subsets of data, and so post-processing is necessary to declutter and group the data into a few more consistent categories, as well as judge the quality of the data extraction process, while also coupling this data with that we had extracted earlier from the UNOOSA website. Once this post-processing is completed, we have "standardizedJSONs" which are then appended to the master-list of data that we call "allUNregisteredObjects.json".

&lt;/p&gt;B) weighted_ranking.csv: The weighted Launch State registration rates derive from the curated allUNregisteredObjects.json file. It establishes a ranking of Launch States in relation to registration promptness. These rankings, set between one and five stars, are first given to individual objects, but countries with many registered ASOs often have outliers with large registration lag. As such, the rankings are scaled higher for states which register larger numbers of ASOs to prevent undue punishment of these countries for their compliance.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Documentation&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Included are documentation about the process by which the two data files were produced, and a presentation with results from analyses performed on them. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3&gt;Usage&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;These datasets can be reused by policymakers, by industry, by researchers and by the public interested in compliance with international regulations for ASOs. &lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The demonstration queries for this study case can be found at: http://astriaservices.tacc.utexas.edu/compliance&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;To visualize ASOs registered with the UNOOSA in ASTRIAGraph, go to: http://astriaservices.tacc.utexas.edu/astriagraph_uno/ &lt;/p&gt;
description: Sources are original documents submitted by States to the United Nations in pdf format as well as information including in the Online Index of Objects Launched into Outer Space.
description: UNITED NATIONS OFFICE FOR OUTER SPACE AFFAIRS (UNOOSA) https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/index.html
description: There are 2 steps involved in scraping this data:
 At first the JSON object that is used by the UNOOSA search index page (https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/osoindex/search-ng.jspx?lf_id=) to generate the table is retrieved. The page is setup to return a subset of rows of this JSON object. The crawler we wrote sends requests (spaced out over a second each so as to not exceed the query rate of the website) to get the subsequent rows and merge them to create the large JSON object. The second step is this JSON object is iterated through all rows, while parsing the registration documents column.
 For the rows where the registration document is linked by UNOOSA, a retrieval of the pdf itself is attempted using the document specific URL. For example:
 https://cms.unov.org/dcpms2/api/finaldocuments?Language=en&Symbol={ST/SG/SER.E/935}