The United Nations Outer Space Treaty was adopted in 1967, at the height of the Cold War. It was prompted by a Soviet rocket that crashed onto the Moon in 1959, raising Western fears of a Soviet claim to lunar sovereignty.

The treaty’s core rules forbid any weapon testing on the Moon, require that all activities be peaceful, and ban national appropriation – no country may claim the Moon as its territory.

Because the treaty is deliberately broad, it contains no specific rules about extracting resources. Hussein Badreddine, a specialist in space law at the University of Sydney, notes that this silence leaves mining largely unregulated.

In 1979 the UN tried to fill the gap with the Moon Agreement, declaring lunar resources the common heritage of mankind. Only 18 nations ratified it; the United States and Russia did not.

In 2015 the United States passed a law that lets its citizens and private companies own and sell space resources. Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates and Japan have enacted comparable legislation.

The Artemis Accords, signed by 76 nations, aim to reaffirm the Outer Space Treaty and add practical rules on resource use and space‑debris mitigation. Russia and China have refused to join.

Space‑law experts warn that companies such as SpaceX could end up controlling valuable lunar sites. Cassandra Steer says the prospect of a single firm monopolising Moon resources “keeps me up at night.”

Rebecca Connolly, chair of the Space Law Council of Australia and New Zealand, says the Moon is becoming the next frontier of geopolitical competition, where being first matters. If the treaty’s non‑appropriation principle is eroded, the nation or company that first lands on a resource‑rich area could dictate who may follow, turning the Moon into a new arena of power.