Nosworthy, BethHenderson, Stacey (Flinders University)de Zwart, MelissaLisk, Joel Willis2025-08-072025-08-072024https://hdl.handle.net/2440/146598Australia has long been seen as an attractive place to base space launch activities. With wide, open, and unpopulated areas, launch facilities can be established in areas presenting low risk to the general public. Additional location benefits include Australian territories providing opportunities for near-equatorial launches and regions which could support launches into polar orbits. This is accompanied by Australia’s long-term stable political and social environment. These factors in mind, it is unsurprising that there have been a range of proposals to establish launch facilities across Australia; from Christmas Island, off the north-west coast of the Australian continent, to central-Australia and far-north Queensland. Australia has engaged with the development of international law for the space domain within the United Nations mechanisms since the dawn of the space age, having participated as a founding member of the ad hoc committee and its successor on the peaceful uses of outer space. Australia is also one of the few States to have ratified all five treaties specifically developed for outer space. In the late-1990s the Australian Federal Government responded to proposals to establish privately operated launch facilities on Australian territories with the Space Activities Act 1998, leading Australia to join a short list of countries to enact national laws that permitted national space activities to take place. Regulations that supported this law emerged in 2001 and the law itself was amended in 2002. The launch facility proposals that dominated the 1990’s and early-2000’s never eventuated. The next decade witnessed a significant change in the nature of the global space industry, with private entities taking the lead in developing technologies with a shift towards small satellite platforms for lower-cost ventures. In response to these changes and a resurgent Australian space industry, the Australian Government undertook a review of the Space Activities Act. Legislative changes in 2018 transformed the Space Activities Act into the Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018. This Thesis explores the development of the Space Activities Act and its evolution to becoming the Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018 by examining historical records including previously confidential cabinet records, parliamentary records and large numbers of public submissions related to the development, implementation, and reform of Australia’s space law over time. Legislative developments in other States are also considered to provide a deep and contextual case study of Australia’s law for space launch and return activities. This Thesis stands as a definitive legislative history of the Space Activities Act and later Space (Launches and Returns) Act 2018.enLawSpace LawLaunchReturnAustraliaInternational LawRegulationThesis