That's actually a very tough question. Thank you for it.
You're right. The major multilateral treaties concerning space were all negotiated and adopted in the 1960s and 1970s and have proven to be remarkably resilient, but they've been supplemented by lots and lots of co-operation. For instance, in Canada, we're heavily reliant on a satellite-based search and rescue system called Cospas-Sarsat. It was created in 1979 at the height of the Cold War in partnership with the Soviet Union, France and the United States, and saves thousands of lives worldwide each year. Russia and China are still participating in that system.
There is [Technical difficulty—Editor] space station. Indeed, an American astronaut launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan just a few months ago as evidence of that continued co-operation.
Internationally, at the United Nations committee on the peaceful uses of outer space, there's still co-operation taking place. Canadian diplomats are playing a central role, I should say. We have very effective diplomatic representation at United Nations bodies dealing with space. At that level, things are actually pretty good.
With regard to space debris specifically, there are two things that people need to realize. First of all, you can't avoid space debris. Our tracking systems, our radar systems, our telescope systems can only detect pieces of debris that are roughly eight centimetres across or larger. There are millions and millions of pieces that are too small to detect all going at 17,000 kilometres an hour. The piece the size of a paint fleck can destroy a billion-dollar satellite. You can't avoid space debris, and you can't clean it up. You can clean up the big pieces but not the small pieces. At least, theoretically, you could clean up the big pieces.
As a result of this, there is a situation of mutually assured destruction in low-earth orbit where you have all this debris. Any country, any actor that engaged in an action that created tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of additional pieces of debris would be putting its own satellites at severe risk. There is a self-interest in avoiding catastrophic collisions and the use of anti-satellite missiles on the part of those states that are heavily dependent on space. The United States, China, European countries, Canada and even Russia have a very strong interest in avoiding the creation of much more debris.
My big concern into the future is that there are countries that are not very dependent on space that are acquiring the capacity to cause a lot of debris in space. I'm thinking about Iran, and I'm thinking about North Korea. When North Korea develops the ability to launch half a million steel pellets into low-earth orbit to create a pellet ring, we have a serious problem.
This is all part of arms control. It's part of our attempt to restrain rogue nations like Iran and North Korea. We do it with nuclear weapons. We now do it with parts of space.