The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, better known as the Moon Treaty or Moon Agreement, is an international treaty that turns jurisdiction of all heavenly bodies (including the orbits around such bodies) over to the international community. Thus, all activities must conform to international law (notably this includes the UN Charter).
In practice, it is a failed treaty since it has not been ratified by any nation which engages in self-launched manned space exploration or has plans to do so (e.g. the United States, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China, Japan, India, and Iran) since its creation in 1979, and thus has a negligible effect on actual spaceflight.
Content
The treaty makes a declaration that the Moon (which the treaty notes includes all celestial bodies for the purposes of language) should be used for the benefit of all states and all peoples of the international community. It also expresses a desire to prevent the Moon from becoming a source of international conflict. To those ends the treaty:
- Bans any military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing or as military bases.
- Bans all exploration and uses of celestial bodies without the approval or benefit of other states.
- Requires that the Secretary-General must be notified of all celestial activities (and discoveries developed thanks to those activities).
- Declares all states have an equal right to conduct research on celestial bodies.
- Declares that for any samples obtained during research activities, the state that obtained them must consider making part of it available to all countries/scientific communities for research.
- Bans altering the environment of celestial bodies and requires that states must take measures to prevent accidental contamination.
- Bans any state from claiming sovereignty over any territory of celestial bodies.
- Bans any ownership of any extraterrestrial property by any organization or person, unless that organization is international and governmental.
- Requires all resource extraction and allocation be made by an international regime.
Ratification
The treaty was finalized in 1979 and entered into force for the ratifying parties in 1984. As a follow-on to the Outer Space Treaty, the Moon Treaty intended to establish a regime for the use of the Moon and other celestial bodies similar to the one established for the sea floor in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
As of January 1, 2008, only 13 states; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, and Uruguay, have ratified it. France, Guatemala, India and Romania have signed but have not ratified it.1 As it is unratified by any major space-faring powers and unsigned by most of them, it is of no direct relevance to current space activities.
According to Island One [1], the Moon Treaty was killed due to the activism of a handful of L5 Society members including K. Eric Drexler. Specifically, they campaigned for awareness of the provisions against any form of sovereignty or private property in outer space and the provisions against any alteration of the environment of any celestial body, prohibiting terraforming.
External links
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References
- ^ United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. 2008. "Status of international agreements relating to activities in outer space as at 1 January 2008. http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/publications/ST_SPACE_11_Rev2_Add1E.pdf".
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