Who owns the Moon?
Henglein and Steets/Getty ImagesScott Shackelford, Indiana University
Private industries have helped drop the cost of launching rockets, satellites and other equipment into space to historic lows. That has boosted interest in developing space – both for mining raw materials such as silicon for solar panels and oxygen for rocket fuel, as well as potentially relocating polluting industriesoff the Earth. But the rules are not clear about who would profit if, for instance, a U.S. company like SpaceX colonized Mars or established a Moon base.
At the moment, no company – or nation – is yet ready to claim or take advantage of private property in space. But the US$350 billion space industry could change quickly. Several companies are already planning to explore the Moon to find raw materials like water; Helium-3, which is potentially useful in fusion nuclear reactors; and rare earth elements, which are invaluable for manufacturing electronics. What they might find, and how easy the material is to bring back to Earth, remains to be seen.
Anticipating additional commercial interest, the Trump administration has created new rules through an executive order following a 2015 law change for how those companies might profit from operations on the Moon, asteroids and other planets. Those rules conflict with a longstanding international treaty the U.S. has generally followed but never formally joined. The administration also is planning to encourage other nations to adopt this new U.S. perspective on space mining.
As a scholar of space law and policy – and a proud sci-fi nerd – I believe the international community could find new ways to peacefully govern space from examples here on our planet, including deep seabed mining and Antarctica.
A 2015 meeting of the International Seabed Authority.AP Photo/David McFadden
Who owns space?
In general, regions of Earth beyond any one nation’s control – like the high seas, the atmosphere and Antarctica – have been viewed by the international community as globally shared resources. That principle applied to space, too, until President Donald Trump’s executive order specifically rejected the idea that space was any sort of “global commons” shared among all nations and peoples of the Earth.
This step is the latest in a series of decisions by U.S. presidents over the last 40 years that have signaled the country’s decreasing willingness to share these types of resources, especially through an international body like the United Nations.
That is one reason why the U.S. has not ratified the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, for example, which was agreed to in 1982 and took effect in 1994.
A similar story played out regarding the Moon.
Moon Treaty and international space law
Over the decades, the U.S. has sought to use its space policy in various ways. President John F. Kennedy, for example, considered turning the Apollo Moon-landing program into a joint U.S.-Soviet mission to promote peace between the superpowers.
Lyndon Johnson’s administration similarly saw space as a shared region, and in 1967 signed the Outer Space Treaty, which proclaimed that space was the “province of all mankind.” However, that treaty didn’t say anything about mining on the Moon – so when the U.S. landed there in 1969, the international community called for regulations.
The U.N.’s eventual Moon Treaty declared the Moon the “common heritage of mankind,” and sought shared international control over resources found there.
However, that plan wasn’t very popular among advocates for a more commercial final frontier. In the U.S., a nonprofit group in favor of space colonization opposed the treaty, fearing it would discourage private investment. The treaty failed ratification in the U.S. Senate. Only 18 nations have, in fact, ratified the Moon Treaty among them Mexico and Australia, none of them major space-faring powers. But even though many countries seem to agree that the Moon Treaty isn’t the right way to handle lunar property rights, that doesn’t mean they agree on what they actually should do.
Finding profit in space
As space launches got cheaper, the U.S. SPACE Act, passed in 2015, gave U.S. companies the right to mine materials from asteroids for profit. That conflicts with the shared-resources view of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
Since then, there have been further political efforts to remove perceived legal hurtles to space mining. In 2017, a Republican congressman sought to formalize the U.S. rejection of space as any sort of common property, proposing a bill that said, “outer space shall not be considered a global commons.” That bill died, but it was reintroduced in 2019 and is currently awaiting action in the House.
A new space race?
Allowing private control of space resources could launch a new space race, in which wealthy companies, likely from developed countries, could take control of crucial resources – like ice on the Moon, which could supply water for people or to fuel rockets – and profit handsomely.
That, in turn, would increase the likelihood of a military arms race, with the U.S., Russia and China developing weapons to defend their citizens’ space assets.
Antarctica, a continent that by international agreement is has no armed military activity and is dedicated to scientific inquiry.NASA/JPL
Applying lessons from the deep, and Antarctica
In finding common ground, and charting a path forward, it is useful to consider lessons from other frontiers. The Moon Treaty tried to set up a system for sharing the benefits of Moon mining similar to how an existing system handled mining the deep sea.
The International Seabed Authority is a U.N. body that lets nations and private firms develop resources from the deep seabed so long as they share the proceeds, particularly with landlocked developing nations. It is recognized by more than 160 nations, though the U.S. is a notable holdout.
Environmental groups have criticized the Authority for not doing enough to safeguard fragile marine environments, but the overall model of sharing the wealth from a collective resource could still be useful. For instance, the Authority’s participants are working on a new code of ethics for deep-sea mining that would emphasize environmental sustainability. Those provisions could be mirrored on other worlds.
Similarly, the global management of Antarctica has useful parallels with the Moon. The entire continent is governed by a treaty that has avoided conflict since 1959 by freezing national territorial claims and barring military and commercial activities. Instead, the continent is reserved for “peaceful purposes” and “scientific investigation.”
A similar approach could become the core of a second attempt at a Moon Treaty, and could even accommodate a provision for commercial activity along the lines of the deep-sea mining rules. In so doing, we must also learn what has not worked in the past, such as ignoring the interests of the private sector and the developing world. Advocates are correct that defining property rights is an important precursor, but it is not a binary choice between a “global commons” or private property, rather there are a universe of rights that deserve consideration and that could provide a proper foundation for sustainable development.
But coming to an international agreement would take time, energy and a widespread willingness to view resources as common assets that should be collectively governed. All those ingredients are in short supply in a world where many countries are becoming more isolationist.
For the immediate future, other countries may or may not follow the U.S. lead, and its influence, toward privatizing space. Japan seems interested, as does Luxembourg, but China and Russia are concerned about their national security, and the European Space Agency is more inclined toward working collectively. Without better coordination, it seems likely that eventually peaceful, sustainable development of off-world resources will give way to competing claims, despite readily available examples of how to avoid conflict.
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Scott Shackelford, Associate Professor of Business Law and Ethics; Executive Director, Ostrom Workshop; Cybersecurity Program Chair, IU-Bloomington, Indiana University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Several missions have already attempted to land on the lunar surface in 2025, with more to come.
AP PhotoZhenbo Wang, University of Tennessee
Half a century after the Apollo astronauts left the last bootprints in lunar dust, the Moon has once again become a destination of fierce ambition and delicate engineering.
This time, it’s not just superpowers racing to plant flags, but also private companies, multinational partnerships and robotic scouts aiming to unlock the Moon’s secrets and lay the groundwork for future human return.
So far in 2025, lunar exploration has surged forward. Several notable missions have launched toward or landed on the Moon. Each has navigated the long journey through space and the even trickier descent to the Moon’s surface or into orbit with varying degrees of success. Together, these missions reflect both the promise and difficulty of returning to the Moon in this new space race defined by innovation, competition and collaboration.
As an aerospace engineer specializing in guidance, navigation and control technologies, I’m deeply interested in how each mission – whether successful or not – adds to scientists’ collective understanding. These missions can help engineers learn to navigate the complexities of space, operate in hostile lunar environments and steadily advance toward a sustainable human presence on the Moon.
Why is landing on the Moon so hard?
Lunar exploration remains one of the most technically demanding frontiers in modern spaceflight. Choosing a landing site involves complex trade-offs between scientific interest, terrain safety and Sun exposure.
The lunar south pole is an especially attractive area, as it could contain water in the form of ice in shadowed craters, a critical resource for future missions. Other sites may hold clues about volcanic activity on the Moon or the solar system’s early history.
Each mission trajectory must be calculated with precision to make sure the craft arrives and descends at the right time and place. Engineers must account for the Moon’s constantly changing position in its orbit around Earth, the timing of launch windows and the gravitational forces acting on the spacecraft throughout its journey.
They also need to carefully plan the spacecraft’s path so that it arrives at the right angle and speed for a safe approach. Even small miscalculations early on can lead to major errors in landing location – or a missed opportunity entirely.
Once on the surface, the landers need to survive extreme swings in temperature – from highs over 250 degrees Fahrenheit (121 degrees Celsius) in daylight down to lows of -208 F (-133 C) at night – as well as dust, radiation and delayed communication with Earth. The spacecraft’s power systems, heat control, landing legs and communication links must all function perfectly. Meanwhile, these landers must avoid hazardous terrain and rely on sunlight to power their instruments and recharge their batteries.
These challenges help explain why many landers have crashed or experienced partial failures, even though the technology has come a long way since the Apollo era.
Commercial companies face the same technical hurdles as government agencies but often with tighter budgets, smaller teams and less heritage hardware. Unlike government missions, which can draw on decades of institutional experience and infrastructure, many commercial lunar efforts are navigating these challenges for the first time.
Successful landings and hard lessons for CLPS
Several lunar missions launched this year belong to NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. CLPS is an initiative that contracts private companies to deliver science and technology payloads to the Moon. Its aim is to accelerate exploration while lowering costs and encouraging commercial innovation.
An artist’s rendering of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which navigated and avoided hazards during its final descent to the surface.NASA/GSFC/Rani Gran/Wikimedia Commons
The first Moon mission of 2025, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, launched in January and successfully landed in early March.
The lander survived the harsh lunar day and transmitted data for nearly two weeks before losing power during the freezing lunar night – a typical operational limit for most unheated lunar landers.
Blue Ghost demonstrated how commercial landers can shoulder critical parts of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade.
The second CLPS launch of the year, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, launched in late February. It targeted a scientifically intriguing site near the Moon’s south pole region.
An artist’s rendering of Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, which is scheduled to land near the lunar south pole for in-situ resource utilization demonstration on the Moon.NASA/Intuitive Machines
The Nova-C lander, named Athena, touched down on March 6 close to the south pole. However, during the landing process, Athena tipped over. Since it landed on its side in a crater with uneven terrain, it couldn’t deploy its solar panels to generate power, which ended the mission early.
While Athena’s tipped-over landing meant it couldn’t do all the scientific explorations it had planned, the data it returned is still valuable for understanding how future landers can avoid similar fates on the rugged polar terrain.
Not all lunar missions need to land. NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small lunar orbiter launched in February alongside IM-2, was intended to orbit the Moon and map the form, abundance and distribution of water in the form of ice, especially in shadowed craters near the poles.
Shortly after launch, however, NASA lost contact with the spacecraft. Engineers suspect the spacecraft may have experienced a power issue, potentially leaving its batteries depleted.
NASA is continuing recovery efforts, hoping that the spacecraft’s solar panels may recharge in May and June.
An artist’s rendering of NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft. If recovered, it will orbit the Moon to measure the form and distribution of water on the lunar surface.Lockheed Martin Space
Ongoing and future missions
Launched on the same day as the Blue Ghost mission in January, Japanese company ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 2 (Resilience) is on its way to the Moon and has successfully entered lunar orbit.
The lander carried out a successful flyby of the Moon on Feb. 15, with an expected landing in early June. Although launched at the same time, Resilience took a longer trajectory than Blue Ghost to save energy. This maneuver also allowed the spacecraft to collect bonus science observations while looping around the Moon.
The mission, if successful, will advance Japan’s commercial space sector and prove an important comeback for ispace after its first lunar lander crashed during its final descent in 2023.
The Resilience lunar lander days before its launch in the payload processing facility at the U.S. Space Force station. The Resilience lander has completed its Earth orbit and a lunar flyby. It is now completing a low-energy transfer orbit and entering an orbit around the Moon.Business Wire
The rest of 2025 promises a busy lunar calendar. Intuitive Machines plans to launch IM-3 in late 2025 to test more advanced instruments and potentially deliver NASA scientific experiments to the Moon.
The European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder will establish a dedicated lunar communications satellite, making it easier for future missions, especially those operating on the far side or poles, to stay in touch with Earth.
Meanwhile, Astrobotic’s Griffin Mission-1 is scheduled to deliver NASA’s VIPER rover to the Moon’s south pole, where it will directly search for ice beneath the surface.
Together, these missions represent an increasingly international and commercial approach to lunar science and exploration.
As the world turns its attention to the Moon, every mission – whether triumph or setback – brings humanity closer to a permanent return to our closest celestial neighbor.Zhenbo Wang, Associate Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Tennessee
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Craters in the lunar surface are visible in this photo taken during the Apollo 11 mission.
NASA via APMichelle L.D. Hanlon, University of Mississippi
April 2025 was a busy month for space.
Pop icon Katy Perry joined five other civilian women on a quick jaunt to the edge of space, making headlines. Meanwhile, another group of people at the United Nations was contemplating a critical issue for the future of space exploration: the discovery, extraction and utilization of natural resources on the Moon.
At the end of April, a dedicated Working Group of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space released a draft set of recommended principles for space resource activities. Essentially, these are rules to govern mining on the Moon, asteroids and elsewhere in space for elements that are rare here on Earth.
As a space lawyer and co-founder of For All Moonkind, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting human heritage in outer space, I know that the Moon could be the proving ground for humanity’s evolution into a species that lives and thrives on more than one planet. However, this new frontier raises complex legal questions.
Space, legally
Outer space – including the Moon – from a legal perspective, is a unique domain without direct terrestrial equivalent. It is not, like the high seas, the “common heritage of humankind,” nor is it an area, like Antarctica, where commercial mining is prohibited.
Instead, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty – signed by more than 115 nations, including China, Russia and the United States – establishes that the exploration and use of space are the “province of all humankind.” That means no country may claim territory in outer space, and all have the right to access all areas of the Moon and other celestial bodies freely.
The fact that, pursuant to Article II of the treaty, a country cannot claim territory in outer space, known as the nonappropriation principle, suggests to some that property ownership in space is forbidden.
Can this be true? If your grandchildren move to Mars, will they never own a home? How can a company protect its investment in a lunar mine if it must be freely accessible by all? What happens, as it inevitably will, when two rovers race to a particular area on the lunar surface known to host valuable water ice? Does the winner take all?
As it turns out, the Outer Space Treaty does offer some wiggle room. Article IX requires countries to show “due regard” for the corresponding interests of others. It is a legally vague standard, although the Permanent Court of Arbitration has suggested that due regard means simply paying attention to what’s reasonable under the circumstances.
First mover advantage – it’s a race
The treaty’s broad language encourages a race to the Moon. The first entity to any spot will have a unilateral opportunity to determine what’s legally “reasonable.” For example, creating an overly large buffer zone around equipment might be justified to mitigate potential damage from lunar dust.
On top of that, Article XII of the Outer Space Treaty assumes that there will be installations, like bases or mining operations, on the Moon. Contrary to the free access principle, the treaty suggests that access to these may be blocked unless the owner grants permission to enter.
Both of these paths within the treaty would allow the first person to make it to their desired spot on the Moon to keep others out. The U.N. principles in their current form don’t address these loopholes.
The draft U.N. principles released in April mirror, and are confined by, the language of the Outer Space Treaty. This tension between free access and the need to protect – most easily by forbidding access – remains unresolved. And the clock is ticking.
The Moon’s vulnerable legacy
The U.S. Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon by 2028, China has plans for human return by 2030, and in the intervening years, more than 100 robotic missions are planned by countries and private industry alike. For the most part, these missions are all headed to the same sweet spot: the lunar south pole. Here, peaks of eternal light and deep craters containing water ice promise the best mining, science and research opportunities.
Regions of the lunar south pole, left, and north pole, right, contain water in the form of ice (blue), which could be useful for space agencies hoping to set up lunar bases.NASA
In this excitement, it’s easy to forget that humans already have a deep history of lunar exploration. Scattered on the lunar surface are artifacts displaying humanity’s technological progress.
After centuries of gazing at our closest celestial neighbor with fascination, in 1959 the Soviet spacecraft, Luna 2, became the first human-made object to impact another celestial body. Ten years later, two humans, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, became the first ever to set foot upon another celestial body.
More recently, in 2019, China’s Chang’e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the Moon’s far side. And in 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 became the first to land successfully near the lunar south pole.
These sites memorialize humanity’s baby steps off our home planet and easily meet the United Nations definition of terrestrial heritage, as they are so “exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity.”
The international community works to protect such sites on Earth, but those protection protocols do not extend to outer space.
Astronaut footprints are still intact on the lunar surface because the Moon doesn’t have weather. But nearby spacecraft or rovers could kick up dust and cover them.AP Photo
The more than 115 other sites on the Moon that bear evidence of human activity are frozen in time without degradation from weather, animal or human activity. But this could change. A single errant spacecraft or rover could kick up abrasive lunar dust, erasing bootprints or damaging artifacts.
Protection and the Outer Space Treaty
In 2011, NASA recommended establishing buffer, or safety zones, of up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) to protect certain sites with U.S. artifacts.
Because it understood that outright exclusion violates the Outer Space Treaty, NASA issued these recommendations as voluntary guidelines. Nevertheless, the safety zone concept, essentially managing access to and activities around specific areas, could be a practical tool for protecting heritage sites. They could act as a starting point to find a balance between protection and access.
The U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space recently proposed new principles for space resource use.United States Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, CC BY-NC-NDOne hundred and ninety-six nations have agreed, through the 1972 World Heritage Convention, on the importance of recognizing and protecting cultural heritage of universal value found here on Earth.
Building on this agreement, the international community could require specific access protocols — such as a permitting process, activity restrictions, shared access rules, monitoring and other controls — for heritage sites on the Moon. If accepted, these protective measures for heritage sites could also work as a template for scientific and operational sites. This would create a consistent framework that avoids the perception of claiming territory.
At this time, the draft U.N. principles released in April 2025 do not directly address the opposing concepts of access and protection. Instead, they defer to Article I of the Outer Space Treaty and reaffirm that everyone has free access to all areas of the Moon and other celestial bodies.
As more countries and companies compete to reach the Moon, a clear lunar legal framework can guide them to avoid conflicts and preserve historical sites. The draft U.N. principles show that the international community is ready to explore what this framework could look like.
Michelle L.D. Hanlon, Professor of Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The U.N. First Committee deals with disarmament, global challenges and threats to peace that affect the international community. On Nov. 1, it approved a resolution that creates an open-ended working group. The goals of the group are to assess current and future threats to space operations, determine when behavior may be considered irresponsible, “make recommendations on possible norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviors,” and “contribute to the negotiation of legally binding instruments” – including a treaty to prevent “an arms race in space.”
We are two space policy experts with specialties in space law and the business of commercial space. We are also the president and vice president at the National Space Society, a nonprofit space advocacy group. It is refreshing to see the U.N. acknowledge the harsh reality that peace in space remains uncomfortably tenuous. This timely resolution has been approved as activities in space become ever more important and – as shown by the Russian test – tensions continue to rise.
Current actions in space are governed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that was developed within the United Nations, seen here.Basil D Soufi/WikimediaCommons, CC BY-SA
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty
Outer space is far from a lawless vacuum.
Activities in space are governed by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which is currently ratified by 111 nations. The treaty was negotiated in the shadow of the Cold War when only two nations – the Soviet Union and the U.S. – had spacefaring capabilities.
While the Outer Space Treaty offers broad principles to guide the activities of nations, it does not offer detailed “rules of the road.” Essentially, the treaty assures freedom of exploration and use of space to all humankind. There are just two caveats to this, and multiple gaps immediately present themselves.
The first caveat states that the Moon and other celestial bodies must be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. It omits the rest of space in this blanket prohibition. The only guidance offered in this respect is found in the treaty’s preamble, which recognizes a “common interest” in the “progress of the exploration and use of space for peaceful purposes.” The second caveat says that those conducting activities in space must do so with “due regard to the corresponding interests of all other States Parties to the Treaty.”
A major problem arises from the fact that the treaty does not offer clear definitions for either “peaceful purposes” or “due regard.”
While the Outer Space Treaty does specifically prohibit placing nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction anywhere in space, it does not prohibit the use of conventional weapons in space or the use of ground-based weapons against assets in space. Finally, it is also unclear if some weapons – like China’s new nuclear capable partial-orbit hypersonic missile – should fall under the treaty’s ban.
The vague military limitations built into the treaty leave more than enough room for interpretation to result in conflict.
Nonmilitary satellites, like those used to take images for weather forecasts, can also serve important military functions.NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center/Flickr, CC BY
Space is militarized, conflict is possible
Space has been used for military purposes since Germany’s first V2 rocket launch in 1942.
Many early satellites, GPS technology, a Soviet Space Station and even NASA’s space shuttle were all either explicitly developed for or have been used for military purposes.
With increasing commercialization, the lines between military and civilian uses of space are less blurry. Most people are able to identify terrestrial benefits of satellites like weather forecasts, climate monitoring and internet connectivity but are unaware that they also increase agricultural yields and monitor human rights violations. The rush to develop a new space economy based on activities in and around Earth and the Moon suggests that humanity’s economic dependence on space will only increase.
However, satellites that provide terrestrial benefits could or already do serve military functions as well. We are forced to conclude that the lines between military and civilian uses remain sufficiently indistinct to make a potential conflict more likely than not. Growing commercial operations will also provide opportunities for disputes over operational zones to provoke governmental military responses.
Military testing
While there has not yet been any direct military conflict in space, there has been an escalation of efforts by nations to prove their military prowess in and around space. Russia’s test is only the most recent example. In 2007, China tested an anti-satellite weapon and created an enormous debris cloud that is still causing problems. The International Space Station had to dodge a piece from that Chinese test as recently as Nov. 10, 2021.
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Similar demonstrations by the U.S. and India were far less destructive in terms of creating debris, but they were no more welcomed by the international community.
The new U.N. resolution is important because it sets in motion the development of new norms, rules and principles of responsible behavior. Properly executed, this could go a long way toward providing the guardrails needed to prevent conflict in space.
From guidelines to enforcement
The U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space has been addressing space activities since 1959.
However, the remit of the 95-member committee is to promote international cooperation and study legal problems arising from the exploration of outer space. It lacks any ability to enforce the principles and guidelines set forth in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty or even to compel actors into negotiations.
The U.N. resolution from November 2021 requires the newly created working group to meet two times a year in both 2022 and 2023. While this pace of activity is glacial compared with the speed of commercial space development, it is a major step in global space policy.
Michelle L.D. Hanlon, Professor of Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi and Greg Autry, Clinical Professor of Space Leadership, Policy and Business, Arizona State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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