News – Who owns the moon? A lawyer from the space meets

SPACE | The Moon

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Friday, July 20, 2018, 16:15 – Most likely, it is the best-known image of a flag never taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first American flag planted on the moon. For those who knew their world history, she also sounded the alarm. Less than a century ago, back on Earth, planting a national flag in another part of the world amounted to claiming that territory for the homeland. Did the stars and the stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?

Edwin E. & # 39; Buzz & # 39; Aldrin Jr. poses for a photo next to the American flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. Credit: Neil A. Armstrong / NASA / AP Photo

When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer who practices and teaches something called "space law", the question that they ask most often, often with a big smile or a wink, is: "So tell me, Who owns the moon? "

Of course, claiming new national territories had been a very European habit, applied to the non-European parts of the world.In particular, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English created d & # 39; But while their attitude was very much centered on Europe, the legal notion of planting a flag was an act of sovereignty was soon glued and became accepted worldwide as an integral part of the law. people

in their minds only to contemplate the legal meaning and consequences of this flag planted, but fortunately the issue had been addressed before the mission.From the beginning of the race to space, the states The United States knew that for many people around the world, the presence of an American flag on the moon would raise major political issues. could become, legally speaking, part of the backwaters of the United States could fuel these concerns, and may give rise to international disputes detrimental both to the US space program and to US interests as a whole. destroys any notion that the non-European parts of the world, although populated, were not civilized and therefore legitimately subject to European sovereignty – however, there was not a single person living on the moon; Yet the simple answer to the question of whether Armstrong and Aldrin, through their small ceremony, transformed the moon, or at least a large part of it, into American territory turns out to be "no". "Neither the US government, nor NASA, nor the US government wanted to have this effect

THE FIRST TREATY OF OUTER SPACE

NASA's Lunar Sampler return container exposed in a vault at NASA's Johnson Space Center Credit: OptoMechEngineer

More importantly, this response was inscribed in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, to which the United States and the US The Soviet Union and all the other space countries had become parties, and the two superpowers agreed that the "colonization" of the Earth had been responsible for the terrible human suffering and the many armed conflicts that had raged in recent years. They were determined not to repeat the mistake of the old European colonial powers when it came to deciding the legal status of the moon, at least the possibility of a "land grab" in the space giving rise to a new world war should be avoided. As a result, the Moon has become a kind of "global commons" legally accessible to all countries – two years before the first effective landing of the Moon.

The businessman Rajzeev V. Baagree, who bought five acres of land on the moon for 1,400 rupees (the equivalent of 31 dollars in 2005) per acre, poses next to the evidence, at his home in Hyderabad, India. It turned out that he was scammed. Credit: Mustafa Quraishi / AP Photo

Thus, the American flag was not a manifestation of the claim to sovereignty, but to honor the American taxpayers and engineers who made the mission possible. Armstrong, Aldrin and third astronaut Michael Collins. The two men wore a plaque saying that they "came in peace for all humanity", and of course, Neil's famous words echoed the same sentiment: his "
small step for the man "was not a" giant leap "for the United States, but" for humanity. "In addition, the United States and NASA held their commitment by sharing lunar rocks and other soil samples of the lunar surface with the rest of the world, either by entrusting them to foreign governments or by allowing scientists from all over the world to access them for badysis and scientific discussions, right in the middle of the Cold War, scientists of the Soviet Union 19659007] Case filed, no longer need space lawyers then … No need to prepare students in space law from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for further discussions and disputes over the lunar law, no?

Although the legal status of the Moon as a "global common good" accessible to all countries in peaceful mission did not meet resistance or challenge
Treatment of outer space: additional details not resolved. Contrary to the very optimistic badumptions made at the time, up to now, humanity has not returned to the moon since 1972, making lunar land rights largely theoretical.

This 1964 photo from the Universal Exposition of the Queens Borough in New York shows a view of a moon colony in the Futurama 2 promenade organized by General Motors. Credit: Photo AP

That is to say, until a few years ago when several new plans were woven to return to the moon. In addition, at least two companies from the United States,
Planetary resources
Deep Space Industries, which is receiving significant financial support, has begun targeting asteroids in order to exploit its mineral resources. Geek Note: As part of the above-mentioned Outer Space Treaty, the moon and other celestial bodies such as asteroids, legally speaking, belong to the same basket. None of them can become the "territory" of a sovereign state or another state.

The fundamental prohibition to acquire a new territory under the Outer Space Treaty by planting a flag or by any other means of natural resources on the moon and d & # 39; other celestial bodies. It's a
great debates that regularly rage in the international community, without any solution accepted unequivocally for the moment. Basically, there are two possible general interpretations.

YOU WANT TO MENT AN ASTEROID?

Countries like the United States and Luxembourg (as the gateway to the European Union) agree that the moon and asteroids are "global commons", which means that each country authorizes its private contractors, provided they are duly authorized and in accordance with other rules of space law, to go out there and extract what they can, to try to make money with it. It's a bit like the law of the high seas, which is not under the control of any particular country, but completely open to law-abiding and duly authorized fishing operations of the citizens and companies from any country. Then once the fish is in their nets, it's legally for sale.

OSIRIS-REx will visit a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission was launched on September 8, 2016 from the Cape Canaveral Air Station. As expected, the spacecraft will reach Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023. Source: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center / ASSOCIATED PRESS

On the other hand,
countries like Russia and a little less explicitly Brazil and Belgium, that the moon and asteroids belong to humanity as a whole. And as a result, the potential benefits of commercial exploitation should somehow increase for humanity as a whole – or at least should be subject to a probably stringent international regime to ensure benefits to the world. the scale of humanity. It's a bit like the scheme originally established for harvesting deep seabed mineral resources. Here, an international licensing regime was created, as was an international company that needed to exploit these resources and share the benefits in all countries.

Although in my opinion the first position would certainly make more sense, both legally and practically, the legal battle is by no means over. Meanwhile, interest in the moon has also been renewed – at least, China, India and Japan have serious plans to return there, which further increases the stakes. Therefore, at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, we will have to teach our students these issues for many years to come. Although in the end it is up to the community of states to determine whether it is possible to reach a common agreement on either one of these two positions it It is crucial that an agreement can be reached in one way or another. Such activities developing without any generally applicable and accepted law would be a disaster scenario. Although it's no longer a colonization, it can all have the same adverse effects.

Frans von der Dunk, Professor of Space Law,

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

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