On 7 February 2010, Prof. Hobe gave a public lecture at the Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa on the dangers of space debris and on possible legal strategies to mitigate space debris. He pointed to the fact that more than 50 years of space flight have already had a rather detrimental effect, particularly on the most interesting orbits in outer space. The production of space debris has considerably increased the likelihood of a crash of tiny pieces of debris with functioning space objects, i.e. the International Space Station “Freedom”.

Because of lack of political interest, the international community has not started yet to come up with concrete and legally binding rules how to mitigate the production of space debris and even to clean up the interesting orbits in outer space. What does exist, however, are non-binding rules. These non-binding space debris mitigation guidelines of an inter-space agency space debris committee were endorsed by the Scientific and Legal Subcommittee and the Full Committee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 2009. The guidelines contain at least some strategy how to mitigate the production of space debris in the future. But the current problem of how to clean up outer space has not been addressed from a legal point of view in terms of responsibility of the user. However, there is some hope that, in the future, in the course of the discussions of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in Vienna, Austria, those rules may be developed.