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Published online 4 October 2007 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2007.142
Column: Muse
Time to rethink the Outer Space Treaty
An agreement forged 40 years ago can’t by itself keep space free of weaponry, says Philip Ball.
Few anniversaries have been celebrated with such mixed feelings as the launch of Sputnik 1, half a century ago this week.
That beeping little metal orb, innocuously named ‘fellow traveller of Earth’, signalled the beginning of satellite telecommunications, global environmental monitoring, and space-based astronomy, as well as the dazzling saga of human journeys into the cosmos.
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