ABSTRACT
The analysis of the practice of states before the conclusion of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty shows that historically custom was the first source of the international law of outer space. Treaty, as a source of international law, can be used as an instrument of anticipatory legal regulation of future types of activities or future situations which do not exist at the moment of the conclusion of a treaty. The emergence of a constant and uniform state practice in a new field of international relations, which requires legal regulation, leads to the establishment of new rules of customary international law if certain requirements laid down by international law are met. In the modern international law of outer space, custom serves as a source of the creation and as a form of the existence of a number of rules governing the relations of states in those areas in which, up to now, there was no treaty regulation.
