Two Nations, a Horrible Accident, Urgent Need to Understand the Laws of Space

The article profiles the Manfred Lachs Space Law Moot Court Competition and argues that African and other global south students are racing to build expertise in space law before orbital disputes become more common. It says low Earth orbit is still legally "the province of all mankind" but is increasingly dominated by SpaceX's Starlink, which owns more than half of roughly 9,000 active satellites. Timiebi Aganaba, a professor at Arizona State University, helped start African student participation in the competition in 2011, and the University of Pretoria won the international championship in 2018. The piece also follows Namatai Katsande, a Midlands State University law student from Zimbabwe, who joined a team for the 2022 competition.