Commentary: Who owns the moon?

“The answer to who owns the Moon is, legally, clear – and routinely ignored. 

"The Moon is a shared commons that drives the Earth's tides, stabilises climate systems and influences ecosystems in ways humans do not fully understand. The Moon also holds deep spiritual and cultural significance for people across the world."  

“Article II of the Outer Space Treaty (1967) prohibits national appropriation by sovereignty, use or occupation. The Moon Agreement (1979) goes further, designating the Moon and its resources the "common heritage of mankind." The legal position has not changed. No state can own the Moon. 

“And yet the question of ownership keeps resurfacing because space law is increasingly mirroring terrestrial concepts of property and extraction. John Locke's argument that land becomes property through labour underpinned colonial expansion across territories declared terra nullius, dispossessing Indigenous peoples across Australia and New Zealand. We are now watching similar legal logic applied to the Moon. The Artemis Accords (2020) stop short of sovereignty claims but explicitly permit resource extraction. National legislation in the US and Luxembourg reinforces that approach. 

"‘Use’, ‘safety zones’ and lunar resource rights risk creating de facto control without formal ownership. 

“As Artemis II advances, the question worth asking is not whether Moon ownership is legal. It isn't. It is whether the international community has the will to prevent a new form of extraterrestrial appropriation. Merely treating the Moon as a resource to be owned will be symptomatic of a lack of novel legal imagination in a rapidly changing interplanetary era.”