I saw the below on Huffington Post this morning and I think it's an interesting question. As more and more billionaires venture into space travel - what's stopping them from vast amounts of real estate on the Moon?
Could someone like Richard Branson essentially claim squatters rights on the Moon?
The 1967 treaty about this subject leaves the door wide open for a large corporation to claim property rights on the Moon:
Could someone like Richard Branson essentially claim squatters rights on the Moon?
Will someone own the moon one day? It may seem like a pretty important question, but no one seems to have the answer.
For now, no one has legal ownership over the moon. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, the moon is not the property of any state, national or international government or organization, or any one entity.
“The legal status of the moon is currently defined by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty of the United Nations," Dr. Ian Crawford, a professor of planetary science at the Birkbeck University of London, told BBC Radio. But that may soon change.
“There is a strong case for developing international law in this area because in 1967 it was not envisaged that anyone other than nation states would be able to explore the moon," Crawford added. "So clearly that is changing now and there is a case for developing the outer space treaty to include private organizations that may wish to exploit the moon or possibly space tourism is likely to happen.”
This is a hot topic since our moon contains many resources, such as rare minerals and the helium-3 isotope, which is an important gas that allows for the production of energy. Whoever has rights to the moon will also have access to those resources.
The 1967 treaty about this subject leaves the door wide open for a large corporation to claim property rights on the Moon:
Article VI says that non-governmental organisations have to be supervised by their nation states. The treaty says nothing about those non-governmental actors claiming property rights, however. “It doesn’t prohibit them, it doesn’t allow them. It’s completely silent,” says Joanne Gabrynowicz, a professor emerita of space law at the University of Mississippi who acts as an official observer to the UN effort to oversee the legal framework governing use of space.