Who owns the moon? A lawyer from the space meets

Most likely, it is the most well-known image of a flag ever taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first United States 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 Stripes on the moon mean the establishment of an American colony?

When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer, I practice and teach what is called the "right of space". a big smile or a flicker in the eyes, it is: "So tell me, who owns the moon?"

Of course, claiming new national territories had been a European habit, applied to the non-European parts of the world. In particular, the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English created enormous colonial empires. But while their attitude was very much centered on Europe, the legal idea that planting a flag was an act of establishing sovereignty was quickly accepted and accepted around the world as part of of the law of nations.

Clearly, astronauts had more important things in mind than to contemplate the legal significance and consequences of this flag planted, but fortunately the problem had been solved before the mission. Since the start of the space race, 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. Any suggestion that the moon 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 wanted the US flag to have this effect

The First Space Treaty

Most importantly, this response was The Soviet Union and all other space nations had become part of the 1967 Treaty on Outer Space, and both superpowers agreed that "colonization" of the Earth had been responsible for the terrible human suffering and many armed conflicts that had raged in recent centuries, and they were determined not to repeat the mistake of the former European colonial powers when it came to deciding on the status of the moon, at least the possibility of "land grabbing" into space giving rise to a new world war was to be avoided.Thus, the moon became a kind of "common global »Legally accessible to all countries – two years before the first effective landing of the moon

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. The two men were wearing a plaque saying they were "coming in peace for all humanity," and of course, Neil's famous words echoed the same sentiment: his "small step for man." "was not a" giant leap "for the United States. In addition, the United States and NASA have kept their commitment by sharing lunar rocks and other lunar surface soil samples with the rest of the world, either by entrusting them to foreign governments, or by allowing scientists from all over the world to access it for scientific analysis and discussion.In the middle of the Cold War, there were even scientists from the Soviet Union.

Case filed, no longer need lawyers of the "Space then?" I do not need to prepare law students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln space for further discussions and disputes over the lunar law , is not it?

No need for lawyers in the space? While the legal status of the Moon as a "global common good" accessible to all countries in peaceful missions has not met with resistance or substantial challenge, the Treaty on Outer Space has left other details unresolved. Contrary to the very optimistic assumptions of the time, humanity has not returned to the moon since 1972, which makes lunar land rights largely theoretical.

That is to say, until a few years ago when several new plans were hatched to return to the moon. In addition, at least two US companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, which have serious financial support, have begun targeting asteroids in order to exploit their 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. This is a major debate that is currently raging in the international community, without any unequivocal solution being in sight. Basically, there are two possible general interpretations:

So, you want to extract an asteroid?

Countries like the United States and Luxembourg (as the gateway to the European Union) agree that the moon and asteroids ", which means that Each country allows its private entrepreneurs, as long as they are duly authorized and in accordance with other relevant rules of space law, to go there and to do so. extract what they can to try to make money. 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 is up to them legally to sell.

On the other hand, countries like Russia and slightly less explicitly Brazil and Belgium argue that the moon and asteroids belong to all humanity. 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 well as an international company, which had to exploit these resources and share the benefits between all countries.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.