A leading Australian space law expert has warned conflict over space assets is "inevitable", and more needs to be done now to avert the potential for hostility.

Professor Melissa de Zwart, the Dean of Law at the University of Adelaide, says growing commercial interest in the mining of precious minerals on asteroids and planets has heightened the danger.

"I think you have to be a realist about that," she said.

"Where you have resources, where you have competition for those resources, where you have investment of money in the extraction of those resources ... there will be an expectation of security around that investment."

While full-scale mining is yet to be tried, there is significant international interest.

Japanese aerospace agency Jaxa has already successfully landed a robotic craft on an asteroid and taken samples. It currently has another probe hovering over an asteroid named Ryugu.

Artist's impression of Jaxa's robotic craft flying above Ryugu. ( Source: JAXA )

Two American companies — Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources — are thought to be the leaders in the field, but in May this year a UK firm called Asteroid Mining Corporation also entered the race.

"Those corporations will be looking to the nation-state to say, well, are you going to protect our investment in this business?" Professor de Zwart said.

A very crowded space

The US Government and American firms continue to play a dominant role in more traditional space technology development and deployment.

SpaceX, for example, is a major private supplier of rockets, while the US Air Force currently coordinates international satellite traffic, providing advanced warnings about potentially dangerous space debris.

But the number of players is rapidly increasing.

The OECD's Space Forum says more than 80 countries now have some form of space program, mostly concentrated on rockets, satellites and satellite-related services and technology.

They estimate the global industry is worth somewhere around $US400 billion and growing quickly.

And that figure could skyrocket if, and when, asteroid mining kicks off.

Eric Stallmer, the president of the US-based Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a consortium of 85 space-related organisations and businesses, believes that moment is fast approaching.

"I think we are looking at a five to 10-year timetable for developing that technology. It makes for an exciting time," he said.

The new frontier

Despite the growing international competition, US officials continue to refer to space in hegemonic terms.

Earlier this month US Vice-President Mike Pence spoke of outer space as the "next great American frontier", while Defence Secretary James Mattis described it as one of America's "vital national interests".

He then went on to warn that it was becoming a "contested war fighting domain".

"We have got to adapt to that reality," he said.

"It's on par with the air, land, sea and cyberspace domains in terms of it being contested. And we've got to be able to compete, to deter and to win."

America's new Space Force — a separate and independent arm of the military — is set to be established by 2020.

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There's also to be a Space Command and a Space Development Agency, tasked with the creation of future space technologies.

America's main space-related military activity — such as the deployment of defence satellites — is currently undertaken by the US Air Force on behalf of other branches of the military.

Much of that role is likely to be given over to this new entity, but exactly how the Space Force will operate, and the broad nature of its brief, still remains a mystery.

The Pentagon has been tasked with finalising the details, which will then be put before Congress for final approval.

Only last year, the Congress rejected the need for such a service.

"I think people have very different ideas about what this Space Force might look like," Professor de Zwart said.

"Is it intended to do capacity building, to train up astronauts, for example, or are you talking about something more science fiction oriented, like placing forces in space?

"I think what people are worried about is the sense that the establishment of a Space Force means that we would immediately have something that looks like war fighting in space."

An arms race in space?

An artist's concept of a spacecraft over the Psyche asteroid. ( NASA/JPL: Peter Rubin )

Dr Gbenga Oduntan, a reader in international commercial law at Kent University, also worries about a "weaponisation" of space.

He believes the precedent set by the Space Force decision could backfire on the US, if non-democratic rivals secretly begin developing their own space weapons programmes in response.

"A Western country like the United States ought to present leadership and not be the one that is running in the direction of an arms race," he said.

"We know for sure that the Russians have reacted to the Space Force plan announced by Trump, they have promised that they are going to step up their own and take it seriously."

But fears about the weaponsation of space have long pre-dated Donald Trump's Space Force initiative.

The six logo options proposed for the US Space Force, which is set to be established by 2020. ( Trump 2020 )

In early 2007 China was criticised by the international community for testing an anti-satellite missile system against one of its own surplus weather satellites.

The test resulted in the destruction of the satellite and the creation of thousands of pieces of space debris.

Beijing claimed the incident was not intended to be threatening, but it's possible the test may have influenced American military thinking as a result.

In February this year the office of the US Director of National Intelligence named both China and Russia as potential military rivals in space.

The 2018 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community report stated: "We assess that, if a future conflict were to occur involving Russia or China, either country would justify attacks against US and allied satellites as necessary to offset any perceived US military advantage derived from military, civil or commercial space systems."

An end to multilateralism

Associate Professor Oduntan believes the US and other countries may be violating international law by developing weapons for space, and by encouraging the possibility of commercial asteroid mining.

He says both the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Agreement of 1979 were designed to prevent the "unilateral and unbridled commercial exploitation of outer-space resources".

But, he acknowledges that while the United States is a signatory to the 1967 Treaty, it has never ratified the Moon Agreement.

For more than a decade now, the UN-aligned Conference on Disarmament has been discussing a possible update or accompaniment to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, a new multilateral agreement.

As part of those ongoing negotiations, both the Russians and the Chinese have proposed an agreement called the PPWT, essentially a treaty that would ban the placement of military weapons in outer space.

The treaty negotiations have repeatedly been criticised by the US.

Dr Oduntan believes such an agreement could be effective if the United States was persuaded to come onboard.

"They have announced that they are not part of it, they are being cool towards it," he said.

"And therefore we have the bizarre situation where it is China and Russia that are making joint proposals and joint presentations as to what this treaty should contain.

"A lot of states, from Sri Lanka to Nigeria to the Netherlands, they've all made contributions, working papers, ideas on what this treaty should contain, and even United Kingdom. However, the US Senate is extremely careful on what it ratifies, and that's not very good for the progress of international law."

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Professor de Zwart says the Outer Space Treaty served a specific purpose during the Cold War in preventing an escalation of military activity on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

"The two superpowers of the day were capable and had sent people and objects into space," she said.

"So, it was a recognition of the fact that they knew that if you placed a weapon of mass destruction in space, it could cause harm to the entire Earth. It was an enormously valuable treaty."

However, she now believes the days of multilateral space treaties are over.

"It doesn't have any teeth now. What you have now is a greater number of space-faring nations and, of course, you have that very unanticipated explosion of commercial uses of space," she said.

Instead, she's part of an international project called the Woomera Manual, that has seen dozens of experts come together to draft a "definitive document" on security law as it applies to space.

The hope is that the manual might make it easier to persuade nation states to comply with existing international agreements.

However, Professor de Zwart concedes that getting all players to act responsibly could prove impossible.

"You may have rogue nations who would be prepared to allow launches from their states, for example. Launches that don't comply with any environmental law regulations," she said.

"But the fear of the rogue actor is something that we have in all walks of life and not just in the space environment."

The Woomera Manual is expected to be completed in 2020, the same year America's new Space Force is due to come into effect.