# ReDSHIFT: A Global Approach to Space Debris Mitigation
## 5 Legal Aspects  
The potential benefits of any proposed mitigation measure is often weakened by its limited practical application. A clear understanding of the complex legal framework of the space activities is therefore essential to try and enforce any innovative mitigation procedure. One of the problems in setting up a normative scheme for space activities in general (and space debris as an outcome of space activities in particular) is the different pace of the advancement of the technology with respect to the law, i.e., the development of new technological solutions is running much faster than the law does while the law is struggling to adapt to technological challenges. A striking example is the planning and development of the new mega-constellations of LEO satellites which are going to stress the existing guidelines to their extreme limits and might require their re-formulation or even new ones. In the framework of the ReDSHIFT project, a special effort is devoted to the study of the current international legal framework related to space debris in order to identify its deficiencies and propose possible advancements. All international space debris mitigation instruments so far have a non-binding character and rely on voluntary adherence. Nevertheless, they provide detailed and practical guidelines (e.g., [8]). They may acquire a binding character provided that there is enough uniform practice which evolves to customary law. Moreover, these guidelines also play a role by serving as a basis for national laws (such as the French and Austrian space law). Two major problems can be immediately identified in the preliminary analysis of the existing national laws: there is no uniformity of national standards (e.g., different definitions of protected regions in LEO, MEO and GEO) and there appears different waivers with justification, for example for small satellites. In the  
Figure 14: Schematic flow chart of the ReDSHIFT software.  
analysis of an optimised legal and political framework able to better promote the application of improved guidelines, it is important to explore how the new design and technologies and rules foster specific branches of the economy. In the environmental economy, there are clear evidences that, contrary to common feelings and initial expectations, new rules are often fostering innovation, urging manufacturers to move from the status quo towards new, often economically profitable technical solutions. The aim of the legal/political and economical analysis within ReDSHIFT is also to push the space manufacturers towards these innovative and possibly profitable directions. Therefore, next to legal mechanisms, economic incentives could also contribute to the 'attractiveness' of the adherence to mitigation standards if properly coupled with viable novel technical solutions. Following this strategy, a few examples of the proposed measures under study include:  
* the possibility to exploit the newly identified re-entry \"corridors\", steering the space traffic towards these preferential routes for disposal, following the extensive cartography of the circumterrestrial phase space, as explained in Section 2;
* the re-definition of the concept of residual lifetime implicit in the 25-year rule, towards a concept considering the actual interaction of a spacecraft with a given protected zone;
* the possibility to apply economic incentives to such promotion of deorbiting devices (similar to what is sometimes seen on Earth in eco-friendly devices and transportation means).