Russian space agency says Trump paving way to seize other planets

[April 08, 2020]  MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, accused Donald Trump on Tuesday of creating a basis to take over other planets by signing an executive order outlining U.S. policy on commercial mining in space.

The executive order, which Roscosmos said damaged the scope for international cooperation in space, was signed on Monday.

It said the United States would seek to negotiate "joint statements and bilateral and multilateral arrangements with foreign states regarding safe and sustainable operations for the public and private recovery and use of space resources".

It said U.S. citizens should have the right to engage in such activity and that "outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons".

Roscosmos said the order put the United States at odds with the notion of space belonging to all humanity.

"Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries (on course for) fruitful cooperation," its statement said.

Relations between Russia and the United States are at post-Cold War lows, but cooperation on space has continued despite an array of differences over everything from Ukraine to accusations of election meddling.

Fans and deltas formed by water and sediment are seen in the Jezero Crater on Mars, identified as a potential landing site for the Mars 2020 Rover, in this false color image taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, published May 15, 2019 and obtained November 15, 2019. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via REUTERS

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "any kind of attempt to privatise space in one form or another - and I find it difficult to say now whether this can be seen as an attempt to privatise space - would be unacceptable".

(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

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