They’re called the “people in outer space.” But besides stopping extra-terrestrial arms races, this tiny UN office has very down-to-earth goals: helping poor countries develop crops and managing natural disasters.
Overshadowed by larger UN siblings like the WHO, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) — and its 27 employees — sits almost forgotten in the vast hallways of the UN headquarters in Vienna.
“If we do make contact with aliens, who do you think should be representing mankind?” UNOOSA Director Mazlan Othman joked.
“It would be the secretary-general of the United Nations ... That’s why we’re here,” the cheerful Malaysian astrophysicist added.
The launch of the first satellite, Russia’s Sputnik, at the height of the Cold War in 1957 prompted fears of an arms race in space. This led to the establishment of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, made of member states, and a small unit that would later evolve into the Office for Outer Space Affairs.
Five major treaties and agreements were drawn up in the following decades, regulating members’ activities in space and advocating equal rights and access for all states.
But despite its origins, the UN office is keen to emphasize the peaceful aspect of its work: setting up programs to help poor countries gain access to space technology for developmental and aid purposes.
“This is what we are most excited about at the UN because that is part of the development agenda of the United Nations,” Othman said. “It is sometimes such a simple way of helping a developing country just to tell them where their water resources are, and it never strikes that member state that they can use satellite data for instance.”
Communications, disaster mitigation, natural resource management and the study of climate change and how diseases spread can all be facilitated by modern space technology.
All states should have access to it, said Othman, which is why UNOOSA set up the Space Applications Program to train and advise developing countries and the Space-based Information for Disaster Management and Emergency Response (SPIDER) measures to put them in contact with aid agencies, NGOs and satellite imagery providers.
The Committee has 69 member states but about two-thirds do not have a space program.
“Just because you cannot have access to space because you don’t have a rocket or ... you cannot build a satellite does not mean that you have no say in matters relating to space,” Othman said.
But there is still a small element of science fiction involved in UNOOSA’s work, for example in helping to coordinate responses to an asteroid potentially crashing into Earth.
No single country has the capability to deflect or destroy a “near-earth object” large enough to do damage, said Jamshid Gaziyev, from UNOOSA’s Committee Services and Research Section.
So planning is essential to have a strategy and avoid disputes between member states — such as over whether to use nuclear weapons — in case of a crisis, he said.
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