Registration Convention (1975)

The Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space (1975) turns the Outer Space Treaty's registration principle into procedure: each launching state maintains a national registry of its space objects and furnishes the UN Secretary-General with particulars — launch date and site, basic orbital parameters, and the object's general function — collected in a public UN register administered by UNOOSA. Registration determines more than bookkeeping: under Article VIII of the OST, the state of registry retains jurisdiction and control over the object, so the registry entry is the legal thread connecting a piece of hardware in orbit to a legal system on Earth — the hook for liability, for authorising on-orbit servicing, and for attribution of behaviour. Practice, however, is uneven: states register at different speeds and granularity, some objects (classified payloads especially) are described in the vaguest terms, and questions the 1975 text never anticipated — transfers of ownership on orbit, mega-constellation bulk registration, rideshare payloads from dozens of jurisdictions — are handled by evolving custom rather than clear rule. The UN registry's designators complement the independent surveillance catalogues: legal identity from registration, physical tracking via catalogue numbers and COSPAR IDs.