Space law is normally referred to international space law. As national space activities develop, however, national space laws have been legislated in many countries for the development of space resources. These are used to present conflicting cases between national and international space law (corpus juris spatialis internationalis) on the interpretation of space resource exploitation. This study is devoted to bridging the gap between these two legal systems. In this paper, the author will critically review the fundamental principles of space resource exploitation under international law and suggest a direction for setting up national space laws for future space resources. This paper is composed of seven parts, including a short Introduction and Conclusion. Part two will discuss acts pertaining to asteroid resources. Part three will deal with res extra commercium. Part four will analyze the non-appropriation principle. Part five will look into the common heritage of mankind. Part six will investigate res nullius humanitatus.

Since 1960, the international community has established a plenty of multilateral agreements on liability regime for ultra-hazardous activities, particularly in the area of international nuclear and space law. The liability regime of nuclear damage has imposed compensation exclusively on operators of nuclear installations whether private or State under strict liability principle of the international conventions. Moreover, new changes of international nuclear conventions following Chernobyl incident reflect a significant change of liability for nuclear accidents. Although there was similar incident, called Cosmos 954 case, with nuclear activity, international space law has not developed and remained ambiguous in certain respects, while imposing absolute liability on State actors. This paper, thus, studies whether States, alone, should be liable for all damage from space activities caused by private operator, similar to the liability scheme of international nuclear law. Moreover, vague term in international space law, for instance, damage and other relevant concepts such as space safety standard and international space organization have been taken into account by comparative approach with the terms of international nuclear law.

Since the existing international legal regime governing space weapons is inadequate, the international community is worried about the weaponization of outer space. This paper introduces the efforts and contributions in this regard made by the UN General Assembly, the Conference on Disarmament, the UN Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the UN Institute for Disarmament Research. It then analyzes several different approaches to solving the problem of weaponization of outer space, i.e. amendment of Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty, conclusion of a multilateral treaty on comprehensive prohibition of space weapons, and transparency and confidence-building measures in outer space activities. It concludes that a multilateral treaty on the prevention of weaponization of outer space with appropriate verification mechanism will be a final solution. At the present stage, a combination of various CBMs can also serve the purpose to prevent space weapons.