ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 discusses the first disarmament measures of outer space law. The debate began in 1962 with the Soviet Union complaining about the United States’ West Ford Project, which threatened to interfere with scientific research in outer space by other nations. That complaint grew stronger after July 9, 1962, when the United States detonated a nuclear bomb in space under a test codenamed Starfish. There was, however, little traction toward a disarmament agreement until after the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. In the aftermath of that crisis, the Soviet Union and the United States accepted the first two concrete disarmament agreements since the Second World War. One agreement was the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, signed on July 25, 1963. The second was the adoption of U.N. Resolution 1884 (XVIII) to ban the emplacement of weapons of mass destruction in space.
