State Responsibility for Private Space Activities: Authorization, Continuing Supervision and Orbital Risk

This article examines how international law allocates responsibility and risk when private entities conduct space activities. Commercial launch providers, satellite operators, on-orbit servicing companies, remote-sensing firms, and future resource-utilization ventures increasingly perform functions once dominated by States, yet the core treaty architecture remains State-centered. The article makes three contributions. First, it separates three legal questions that are often conflated: international responsibility for national space activities under Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty, attribution of private conduct to a State under the general law of State responsibility, and liability for damage caused by space objects under the Liability Convention. Second, it conceptualizes “continuing supervision” as a regulatory cycle extending from licensing and technical conditions through monitoring, incident reporting, modification, end-of-life obligations, and enforcement. Third, it proposes a risk-tiered supervision matrix in which regulatory intensity increases with operational proximity, autonomy, destructive potential, data sensitivity, and externality. The article relies on the Outer Space Treaty, Liability and Registration Conventions, the International Law Commission’s Articles on State Responsibility, United Nations guidance on national space legislation, and emerging standards for rendezvous and proximity operations. It argues that Article VI should not be treated as a slogan or as automatic attribution of every private act to the State. Its contemporary significance lies in requiring States to build credible regulatory capacity for private activities whose externalities can propagate across the shared orbital environment.