The Governance Vacuum at 384,400 Kilometres
On 23 August 2023, India's Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down near the lunar South Pole, making India the fourth nation to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and the first to do so at high southern latitudes. The achievement was celebrated globally — but it also crystallised a question that no existing legal framework can cleanly answer: who governs what happens next?
The lunar South Pole is not merely a scientific curiosity. Its permanently shadowed craters contain water ice — a resource that can be electrolysed into hydrogen and oxygen, providing both rocket propellant and breathable atmosphere for long-duration missions. Whoever establishes durable operational presence near those ice deposits will hold a strategic advantage in cislunar space that compounds over decades. The governance frameworks being constructed around that advantage will shape the rules of space for a century.
As of August 2026, two competing coalitions are attempting to fill the legal vacuum left by the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST): the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, now with 68 signatory nations, and the China-Russia-led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), which is positioning itself as the alternative for nations seeking space cooperation outside the American framework. Neither coalition has produced a binding international treaty. Neither has resolved the fundamental tension between the OST's prohibition on national appropriation of celestial bodies and the commercial imperative to extract and utilise lunar resources. And neither has answered the question that will eventually define everything: what happens when two operators claim the same patch of lunar regolith?
The Treaty That Was Never Designed for This Moment
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 was a product of Cold War diplomacy between two superpowers operating government rockets on government budgets. Its core provisions — that outer space is the "province of all mankind," that no nation may claim sovereignty over celestial bodies, and that launching states bear international responsibility for their space objects — were designed to prevent the Moon from becoming a military base and to preserve the principle of free access for all nations.
Those provisions remain in force. But the OST was not designed for a world of 68 Artemis signatories, private lunar landers, water-ice mining operations, and commercial constellations numbering in the thousands. Its silence on resource extraction has become the central legal controversy of the 2020s.
The 1979 Moon Agreement attempted to address this gap by establishing the Moon's resources as the "common heritage of mankind" — a principle that would require an international regime to govern any extraction and distribute benefits equitably. The Agreement has never been ratified by any major space power. The United States, Russia, China, and the European Space Agency member states have all declined to sign. It is, in practical terms, a dead letter.
What remains is a legal framework built for a different era, being interpreted by competing coalitions to support incompatible conclusions about who may extract what, where, and under what conditions.
"The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was written for a world of two superpowers and government rockets. It was not designed for a world of 68 Artemis signatories, private lunar landers, and water-ice mining operations."
The Artemis Architecture: Adaptive Bilateralism at Scale
The Artemis Accords, launched by the United States in 2020, represent a deliberate strategic choice to build governance through coalition rather than treaty. Each Accord is a bilateral agreement between the United States and a partner nation, establishing shared norms for lunar exploration without requiring Senate ratification or UN approval. By August 2026, 68 nations have signed — a number that includes most of the world's established space agencies and a growing cohort of emerging space nations from Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
The Moon's South Pole is not merely a scientific destination — it is the first contested sovereign resource frontier beyond Earth, and the governance frameworks being built around it will define the rules of space for a century.
The Accords establish several operational principles that are, individually, relatively uncontroversial: transparency in operations, interoperability of systems, open sharing of scientific data, and the preservation of heritage sites. But two provisions have generated sustained legal and diplomatic controversy.
The first is the affirmation that space resource extraction is consistent with the OST and does not constitute prohibited national appropriation. This interpretation — that you can own what you extract without claiming sovereignty over the territory — is legally contested. Critics argue it is a convenient reading that allows resource enclosure under the guise of operational activity. Proponents argue it is the only interpretation that makes commercial space development viable.
The second is the concept of "safety zones" — areas around lunar operations where other operators are asked to refrain from interference. The Accords frame these as practical operational measures analogous to maritime exclusion zones around drilling platforms. Critics, particularly from nations outside the Artemis coalition, frame them as de facto territorial claims dressed in operational language.
"Safety zones, as currently conceived under the Artemis Accords, are the legal equivalent of a land claim dressed in operational language — and every non-signatory nation understands exactly what they mean."
The Coalition's Strategic Logic
The Artemis coalition's expansion to 68 nations reflects a deliberate strategy of norm-setting through practice. By building a large coalition of nations that operate under shared principles, the United States is attempting to establish those principles as the de facto international standard — not through a binding treaty, but through the weight of collective practice. If enough nations operate under Artemis norms, those norms become the baseline against which any alternative framework must argue.
This approach has significant advantages. It is fast — bilateral agreements can be concluded in weeks rather than the years required for multilateral treaty negotiation. It is flexible — norms can be updated without requiring unanimous consent. And it is strategically selective — the United States can choose which nations to invite and on what terms.
But it also has a fundamental vulnerability: it is only as durable as American leadership in space. If the United States loses its operational advantage on the Moon — through mission delays, budget constraints, or commercial failures — the normative framework it has built loses its anchor.
The ILRS Counter-Coalition: State-Led Multilateralism
China and Russia's International Lunar Research Station represents a structurally different approach to lunar governance. Where the Artemis Accords are bilateral and U.S.-led, the ILRS is positioned as a genuinely multilateral initiative open to any nation willing to participate on terms set by Beijing and Moscow. Where the Accords are non-binding political commitments, the ILRS is structured as a phased infrastructure programme with defined technical milestones.
The ILRS's governance philosophy draws on a different reading of the OST — one that emphasises the "province of all mankind" language and the principle that space should not become the domain of any single power or coalition. From this perspective, the Artemis Accords are not a legitimate governance framework but a unilateral attempt by the United States to set rules that serve American commercial and strategic interests.
China aims for a crewed lunar landing by 2030. The ILRS's construction phase is planned to begin in the early 2030s, with a permanent robotic presence at the South Pole as the initial objective. The programme has attracted formal participation from several nations, including Pakistan, Venezuela, and South Africa, and has extended invitations to India — which, as an Artemis signatory that also landed near the South Pole, occupies a uniquely strategic position between the two blocs.
India's Multi-Alignment Strategy
Safety zones, as currently conceived under the Artemis Accords, are the legal equivalent of a land claim dressed in operational language — and every non-signatory nation understands exactly what they mean.
India's position illustrates the complexity of the emerging governance landscape. As an Artemis signatory, India has formally committed to the Accords' principles. But as a nation with its own successful lunar programme and a long tradition of strategic autonomy, India has also received and not rejected ILRS invitations. New Delhi's preference appears to be maintaining optionality — participating in the Artemis framework while preserving the ability to cooperate with the ILRS on terms that serve Indian interests.
This multi-alignment strategy is not unique to India. Several emerging space nations are navigating the same tension: the Artemis coalition offers access to American technology, funding, and operational expertise; the ILRS offers an alternative that does not come with the political conditions embedded in the Accords. For nations that have historically been wary of American-led frameworks, the ILRS provides a credible alternative — even if its technical capabilities remain less proven.
The UN COPUOS Process: Multilateralism's Slow Lane
While the Artemis and ILRS coalitions compete to establish facts on the ground, the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) continues its deliberate work on a multilateral framework for space resource activities. The Committee's Working Group on Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities has been drafting recommended principles throughout 2026, attempting to build the kind of broad international consensus that neither the Accords nor the ILRS can claim.
The COPUOS process has the legitimacy that bilateral frameworks lack — it includes all major space powers, operates by consensus, and produces recommendations that carry the weight of UN endorsement. But it also has the limitations that consensus-based multilateralism always carries: it is slow, it produces the lowest common denominator of agreement, and it cannot move faster than its most reluctant member.
Proposals for more ambitious institutional innovation — including an International Lunar Development Authority modelled on public-private partnerships like the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey — have been floated in policy circles. Such an authority could theoretically act as a quasi-governmental regulator for lunar real estate and infrastructure, providing the kind of binding dispute resolution mechanism that neither the Accords nor the ILRS currently offers. But the political conditions for creating such an institution do not currently exist.
The Resource Extraction Dilemma
At the centre of the governance debate is a question that existing frameworks cannot cleanly resolve: can a private company or national agency extract lunar water ice, sell it, and retain the proceeds — without that activity constituting the prohibited "national appropriation" of the Moon?
The United States answered this question domestically in 2015 with the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which affirmed that American citizens may own resources they extract from space. Luxembourg followed with similar legislation in 2017. The UAE, Japan, and several other nations have enacted comparable domestic frameworks. The Artemis Accords extend this principle to the international level, affirming that resource extraction is consistent with the OST.
But domestic legislation and bilateral political commitments are not the same as binding international law. A nation that has not signed the Accords is not bound by their interpretation of the OST. China and Russia explicitly reject the Artemis reading of resource rights. And the COPUOS process has not yet produced a consensus position on the question.
The practical consequence is that the first significant commercial lunar mining operation will occur in a legal environment where the operator's rights are affirmed by some nations and contested by others. The dispute resolution mechanisms for that scenario do not yet exist.
"The Moon's South Pole is not merely a scientific destination — it is the first contested sovereign resource frontier beyond Earth, and the governance frameworks being built around it will define the rules of space for a century."
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty was written for a world of two superpowers and government rockets. It was not designed for a world of 68 Artemis signatories, private lunar landers, and water-ice mining operations.
Emerging Governance Models: Regional Actors and Domestic Frameworks
Beyond the Artemis-ILRS binary, a more complex governance landscape is emerging. Regional space agencies — including the Latin American and Caribbean Space Agency (ALCE) and the African Space Agency (AfSA) — are developing collective positions that allow emerging space nations to negotiate more effectively with both major blocs. Nations like Peru and Kenya are integrating their domestic space policies with international standards while preserving strategic flexibility.
Several nations have adopted "decoupled" governance models that separate regulatory oversight from operational mandates, creating environments that attract private investment while maintaining national control over strategic decisions. The Netherlands and Canada have been particularly active in developing regulatory frameworks that accommodate commercial activity without ceding governance authority to either major coalition.
The integration of artificial intelligence into satellite operations and resource management is adding another layer of complexity. Peru's Law No. 31814, which regulates AI in the space sector, represents an early attempt to address the governance implications of autonomous systems operating in space — a challenge that will become significantly more acute as lunar operations scale.
What a Functional Governance Framework Would Require
The gap between the governance frameworks that currently exist and the governance frameworks that the lunar economy will require is substantial. A functional regime for the long-term governance of lunar activity would need to address at minimum: clear rules for resource extraction rights and benefit-sharing; binding dispute resolution mechanisms for conflicts between operators; environmental protection standards for the lunar surface; safety and coordination protocols for operations in proximity; and a mechanism for including non-spacefaring nations in governance decisions that affect the common heritage of mankind.
None of the existing frameworks — the Artemis Accords, the ILRS, or the COPUOS process — provides all of these elements. The Accords provide operational norms but lack binding dispute resolution. The ILRS provides an alternative coalition but has not published detailed governance principles. COPUOS provides legitimacy but lacks speed and specificity.
The most likely near-term trajectory is continued fragmentation: the Artemis coalition will establish operational norms through practice, the ILRS will establish a competing presence, and the COPUOS process will produce recommendations that neither coalition is fully bound by. The first serious governance crisis — a disputed resource claim, a collision between operators from different coalitions, or a safety zone conflict — will test whether any of these frameworks has the authority to resolve it.
The Deeper Question: Governance as Infrastructure
The lunar governance debate is ultimately a debate about what kind of infrastructure humanity wants to build before it becomes a multi-planetary species. Physical infrastructure — rockets, landers, habitats, mining equipment — is being built at pace. Legal and institutional infrastructure is lagging significantly behind.
The history of terrestrial resource governance offers cautionary precedents. The governance of the deep seabed, established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, took decades to negotiate and remains contested by major powers. The governance of Antarctica, established under the Antarctic Treaty System, has held for over six decades but faces increasing pressure from commercial interests. The governance of the electromagnetic spectrum, managed by the International Telecommunication Union, provides a model of technical coordination that has worked reasonably well — but only because the ITU was established before the spectrum became commercially valuable.
The Moon's governance is being contested after the resource has been identified and before the extraction has begun. That is a better position than governing after the fact — but only if the competing coalitions can find enough common ground to build institutions that will hold when the stakes become real.
The 68 nations that have signed the Artemis Accords, the nations that have joined or are considering the ILRS, and the 100-plus nations that participate in COPUOS all have a stake in getting this right. The question is whether the geopolitical competition that is driving the race to the Moon will also drive the construction of the governance architecture that a permanent lunar presence will require — or whether that architecture will be built, as so much terrestrial governance has been, only after the first crisis makes its absence undeniable.
