to the sovereign area of airspace and the non-sovereign areas of outer space, the Moon, and other celestial bodies. As noted in the Introduction, the United Nations through its Ad Hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space began in 1959 to consider the boundary between space and airspace. Although the subject received occasional reference at the UN prior to 1967 it was not until that year that the issue became an agenda item for the legal subcommittee of COPUOS. Even then the problem was not given careful scrutiny until 1977. The focus of the subcommittee on this subject is illustrated in the successive agenda titles. In 1970 the subcommittee received a background paper from the UN Secretariat entitled "The Question of the Definition and/or the Delimitation of Outer Space," which in large part dealt with the spatial approach to the subject. In 1977 the chairman of the subcommittee assigned the following title to the agenda: "Matters relating to the definition and/or delimitation of outer space and outer space activities." This was changed in 1978 by the legal subcommittee to "Questions relating to the definition and/or delimitation of outer space and outer space activities, also bearing in mind questions relating to the geostationary orbit." Convention on International Civil Aviation of December 7, 1944. 3 Bevans 944, TIAS 1591. This agreement entered into force for the United States on April 4, 1947. "Principles Treaty," Article 2. U.N. Doc. A/AC.105/C.2/7, 7 May 1970. U.N. Doc. A/AC.105/196, 11 April 1977. U.N. Doc. A/AC.105/218, 13 April 1978.
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