Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vog Obam here. Maybe it will be a jealous astronaut who decides to eliminate a rival in an orbital love triangle. Or maybe being cooped up in a spacecraft on an interplanetary flight will cause one crew member to finally lose it at a colleague's annoying throat clearing. Or maybe it will be a killing made to look like an accident for some kind of nefarious space plot. But
sooner or later it seems likely to happen. Given humans propensity for committing homicidal violence against one another all over the world, somebody is going to commit a murder in space or on another planet or moon, And when it happens, authorities will have to figure out how to catch the perpetrator and restore justice. But it's not going to be easy.
Investigating a murder in space would be vastly more complicated and difficult than probing a crime on Earth, and law enforcement agencies and words may have to deal with tricky jurisdictional issues that end up requiring negotiations among spacefaring companies, and until the laws are rewritten, judges will have to take statutes and legal standards that were developed to deal with murder allegations on Earth and figure out how to
apply them to accusations of lethal violence in space. You might be surprised to learn that nations already have legal jurisdiction that stretches outside the confines of this planet. That's covered an Article eight of the nineteen sixty seven Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States and the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and other
celestial bodies. It specifies that whenever one of the nations that's a party to the Treaty launches an object the spacecraft, satellite, or space station into space, or builds one on a
celestial body, that nation retains jurisdiction and control over it. Thus, according to legal experts, if a U S astronaut is accused of killing another American while try raveling in a NASA spacecraft or on a commercial space vehicle launched from the United States, the FBI and federal prosecutors would be within their authority to arrest the alleged killer and bring
them back to Earth for trial in federal court. Things might get a little more complicated if the murder occurs on the International Space Station and the alleged killer and victim are citizens of different countries. But yes, there are experts in this. We spoke via email with Franz G. Von der Dunk, the male professor of space law at
the University of Nebraska Lincoln's College of Law. They said Article twenty two of the intergovernmental agreement concluded between the parties deviates from the aforementioned international treaty clauses and by contract concedes jurisdiction to the state of nationality of the offender.
But there's a caveat quote, if the life or safety of persons with other nationalities and or the safety of the space station is at stake, consultation should take place with these other countries concerned on which country should actually initiate prosecution, which may result in the country of nationality
of the victim doing that. But this only covers the International Space Station or I s S. Things could get even more complicated jurisdictionally if there's a killing on a future private sector orbital hotel, the sort of place where this is probably more likely to occur. We also spoke via email with Michelle Hanlon associate director of the Air and Space Law Program at the University of Mississippi School
of Law. She said, if you have four hundred civilians in space, you know crime inevitably is going to happen. We send the most disciplined and fit people, the best of humanity to the i s s. With a hotel, you're not going to be able to impose the same standards you need to make money. You're going to get a lot greater variety of people, and you know there is going to be crime, possibly from stealing a watch
all the way to murder. Who actually qualifies as the hotel's launching state with jurisdaytion under the nineteen sixty seven treaty could be murky too. It could be Nation A, which is home to the company that operates the hotel, or it could be Nation B, where the installations components were manufactured, or Nation C, where the launch pad for the rocket that transported the parts into space was located, or Nation D, home to the company that rented the
launch pad. Hamlin said, arguably any of these states could have jurisdiction as a result. Crimes in space, particularly incidents involving nationals from different countries most likely would lead to diplomatic negotiations to see who gets to take charge and what if an astronaut on a spacewalk decides to, say, cut another astronaut's tether, who would have jurisdiction then, since the act would have occurred outside of an object controlled
by a nation. We also spoke via email with Henry R. Hertzfeld, a research professor and director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He said, although there is no sovereignty outside spacecraft, there are analogies to the law on ships and international waters, and also
to issues that might occur in Antarctica. Of both places with no national sovereignty, any person in space has a national citizenship is the responsibility of the launching state or the person state of citizenship for their activities in space, and would be tried for a violation of the law in the appropriate state. But let's assume that the US
takes jurisdiction over a space murder. Investigating the crime and building a case is going to be tricky considering that the crime scene and potential witnesses are outside the Earth. Hamlin said, you might have to add a whole new profession space cop. There's going to be a tremendous cost to send someone into space just to investigate a murder, and gathering evidence in space or on another planet or
moon might be especially difficult. DNA, which is increasingly a key means of identifying perpetrators, would age differently on Mars than on Earth because of the increased exposure to solar radiation due to the red planets that are atmosphere. Additionally, lower gravity would lead to such things as different splatter
patterns from stab wounds. On the plus side, the ubiquitous Martian dust clinging to the exteriors of space suits and other surfaces might provide a valuable new sort of evidence handling figures that investigators and prosecutors will find a way to deal with it. She said. Our law developed four fingerprints in DNA. When you prosecute a criminal case, you do what you can with what you're given. Space murderer may also require the courts to grapple with Fourth Amendment issues.
Since astronauts are continually being monitored in myriad ways, including on video. Hanlon said there's a value to having cameras in every room of a spacecraft, but do you have an expectation of privacy? She expects that many of these questions will be resolved by wise judges and lawyers, but should also like to see spacefaring communities come together and work out a new international agreement on how to collaborate
on handling future crimes in space. She said, what we don't want is an international space regime that has very different concepts from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Hopefully we can explore space together as a species and have common understandings. Today's episode was written by Patrick J. Kaiger and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio's
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