“There is at least a liability convention that says if your country’s space object crashes in my country, I can demand compensation, but I have to give the object back to you,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “What there isn’t at the moment is what I call a ‘reckless driving law.’ You only get to complain if it actually crashes. [China] should not have left this big thing in orbit, but if they play the odds and get lucky and it crashes in the ocean, we don’t really have any comeback.”

Source: Washington Post May 07, 2021 11:05 UTC