There is really no prohibition in Article VII to doing ‘damage’, however it may be defined, to a celestial body; only to the property or persons of another signatory. And in Article VIII, it is levying a requirement upon a nation to police the actions of its people and ‘objects’, e.g. spacecraft, rovers, outposts, et cetera, but it doesn’t directly apply to the actions of individuals or impose any specific penalties. Really, the intent of the treaty was to prevent the militarization of space at a time when the two spacefaring superpowers had been contemplating and investigating various scemes for orbital weapon basing. The scope of the treaty was never really intended to address sovereignty of independent organizations or provide authority to the UN to directly police the actions of individuals or ‘judicial persons’ (corporations).
I would say ‘discussing’ rather than ‘arguing’. In any case, it is difficult to say much that is definitive about ‘space law’ beyond FAA and FCC/ICAO regulations, so what a person or company could or could not get away with doing in space and on Mars or elsewhere is largely opinion and speculation.
Doesn’t any space payload automatically fall under ITAR, just by virtue of being a space payload? I know that some of my colleagues who did space stuff had constant headaches with that.
Traditionally, yes. Pretty much every payload has used some components in sensors and power systems (and guidance, if so equipped) that falls within the provisions of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), even if they are built with freely available commercial S-class components… But when you have CubeSats using Android-based smartphones for command and control, with commercial cryptography, and using ham frequency orbit-to-ground communication it is pretty hard to make the case that any technology they are using isn’t already widely available around the world, especially since most of the electronic components are built in South Korea, Indonesia, or China and purchased over the Internet. ITAR, in its current interpretation, is really a product of the mid-Nineties and concerns that Iran or Pakistan might get their hands on something that could be used to support their nuclear programs. Since then that cat has definitely escaped the bag, and ITAR is mostly an administrative hurdle unless you are doing observation of space objects above the horizon (still a no-no without DoD approval), are capable of eavesdropping on communications, or have a substatial propulsion system such that the spacecraft could be used as a kinetic weapon.
Come to think of it, I’m not sure how much trouble my cubesat colleagues had with ITAR. Most of the complaints I heard were from the folks using sounding rockets for solar observations.
(for instance, the regulations required them to cover up the window in the door to their lab. Which they did, with a big friendly sign saying “This is not a secret government laboratory”)