The Governance Gap at a Glance
Humanity is preparing to send humans to Mars. SpaceX's Starship programme, NASA's Artemis architecture, and China's long-range space ambitions all point toward crewed Mars missions within the next decade. Yet the legal framework governing what those humans may do when they arrive—what resources they may extract, what territory they may occupy, how disputes will be resolved, and who bears responsibility when things go wrong—remains, in the most precise legal sense, undefined.
This is not an oversight. It is a consequence of the extraordinary pace at which space ambitions have outrun the institutions designed to govern them. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST), which remains the foundational instrument of international space law, was negotiated in a world where space was the exclusive domain of two superpowers and the prospect of commercial resource extraction from celestial bodies was science fiction. In 2026, it governs a landscape that includes 76 signatories to the Artemis Accords, a proliferating ecosystem of commercial space actors, and serious engineering plans for Martian settlements.
This data brief maps the key metrics, legal provisions, competing frameworks, and governance proposals that define the current state of Mars governance—and the gap between where international law stands and where it needs to be.
Key Data Points
The Artemis Accords: Reach and Limits
76 — Nations that have signed the Artemis Accords as of September 2026, representing a significant expansion from the original 8 signatories in 2020.
0 — The number of binding legal obligations created by the Artemis Accords. The Accords are explicitly non-binding, functioning as a statement of principles rather than a treaty.
2 — The number of major spacefaring nations that have not signed: Russia and China, which are pursuing a parallel framework through the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) partnership.
1967 — The year the Outer Space Treaty was signed, making it 59 years old in 2026. It predates the internet, the personal computer, and the commercial satellite industry.
3–22 minutes — The one-way communication delay between Earth and Mars depending on orbital geometry, making real-time legal oversight of Martian operations physically impossible.
The Commercial Space Economy
$7.8 billion — Projected market size for AI in space exploration in 2026, growing at a compound annual rate of 32.3%.
1.4 million — Objects larger than one inch currently orbiting Earth, creating orbital congestion that existing governance frameworks are inadequate to manage.
3 — Nations (United States, Luxembourg, United Arab Emirates) that have enacted domestic legislation explicitly permitting private ownership of space resources, a position that critics argue conflicts with the OST's non-appropriation principle.
40%+ — Projected decline in search engine traffic to news publishers over the next three years as AI answer engines reshape information distribution—a parallel governance challenge that illustrates how quickly technology can outpace regulatory frameworks.
The Legal Architecture: What Exists and What Doesn't
The Outer Space Treaty was designed for two superpowers racing to plant flags. It was not designed for a multi-actor commercial space age in which private companies plan to mine asteroids, establish Martian settlements, and deploy autonomous systems across the solar system.
The Outer Space Treaty (1967): The Foundation
The OST remains the cornerstone of international space law, but its provisions were drafted for a world that no longer exists. Its key articles establish principles that are simultaneously foundational and inadequate for the governance of Mars:
Article I mandates that space exploration be conducted "for the benefit and in the interests of all countries" and that outer space be "the province of all mankind." This principle is widely cited but poorly operationalised—there is no mechanism for ensuring that the benefits of Mars exploration are equitably distributed, and no institution with the authority to enforce such distribution.
Article II prohibits national appropriation of celestial bodies "by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means." This provision is the source of the most significant legal uncertainty in contemporary space governance. Does it prohibit the extraction of resources from Mars? Does it prohibit the establishment of permanent settlements? Legal scholars disagree, and the OST provides no mechanism for resolving that disagreement.
Article VI assigns international responsibility to states for all national activities in space, including those conducted by non-governmental entities. This provision was designed for an era when private space activity was negligible. In 2026, it creates a complex web of state responsibility for commercial actors whose activities may be difficult to monitor, regulate, or attribute.
Article IX requires states to avoid "harmful contamination" of celestial bodies—a provision that has significant implications for Mars, where the question of whether microbial life exists or has existed makes planetary protection a genuine scientific and ethical imperative.
The Companion Conventions: Partial Coverage
The OST is supplemented by four companion agreements that address specific aspects of space governance:
The 1968 Rescue and Return Agreement establishes obligations for the rescue of astronauts in distress. It was designed for emergency situations involving individual astronauts, not for the governance of permanent settlements with populations of hundreds or thousands.
The 1972 Liability Convention establishes that launching states are liable for damage caused by their space objects. It does not address the liability of autonomous systems, the allocation of responsibility among multiple commercial actors involved in a single mission, or the governance of damage caused by activities on the surface of Mars.
The 1975 Registration Convention requires states to register space objects with the United Nations. It provides a basic transparency mechanism but no enforcement authority.
The 1979 Moon Agreement, which would establish the Moon and other celestial bodies as the "common heritage of mankind" and require international governance of resource extraction, has been signed by only 18 states and ratified by none of the major spacefaring nations. It is, for practical purposes, a dead letter.
"The Outer Space Treaty was designed for two superpowers racing to plant flags. It was not designed for a multi-actor commercial space age in which private companies plan to mine asteroids, establish Martian settlements, and deploy autonomous systems across the solar system." — Harvard Law Review, International Law Journal, 2025
Competing Frameworks: The Bifurcation of Space Governance
The Artemis Architecture
The Artemis Accords represent the most significant attempt to update the norms of space governance since the OST. Developed by NASA and the U.S. Department of State, they establish principles for civil space exploration that include transparency, interoperability, the release of scientific data, the preservation of heritage sites, and the management of space debris.
On the critical question of resource extraction, the Accords take a position that is legally contested but practically significant: they affirm that the extraction and utilisation of space resources is consistent with the OST, and that such activities do not constitute national appropriation. This interpretation, which aligns with U.S. domestic legislation enacted in 2015, has been accepted by the 76 signatories but rejected by Russia and China.
A space COP would not solve every problem, but it would create the institutional infrastructure for solving problems as they arise—which is precisely what the current framework lacks.
The Accords also introduce the concept of "safety zones"—temporary areas established around operations where signatories provide notification of their activities and coordinate with others to avoid harmful interference. These zones are not territorial claims, but they create a de facto operational exclusivity that critics argue is functionally equivalent to one.
The ILRS Alternative
Russia and China's International Lunar Research Station represents a competing governance architecture that explicitly rejects the Artemis framework as U.S.-centric. The ILRS partnership, which includes a growing number of nations, is developing its own norms for lunar and deep space governance that emphasise multilateral decision-making through established UN institutions rather than bilateral agreements with the United States.
The bifurcation of space governance into two competing blocs—one centred on the Artemis Accords and one on the ILRS—creates significant risks for the governance of Mars. If the two blocs develop incompatible norms for resource extraction, safety zones, and liability, the result could be a governance vacuum in which competing claims cannot be resolved through any agreed mechanism.
The COP Proposal: A Third Way
A growing body of legal scholarship, including work by Harvard Kennedy School Fellow Ely Sandler and researchers at the Belfer Center, proposes a "Conference of the Parties" (COP) model for updating space governance without the political impossibility of formally amending the OST.
Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, signatories to the OST could use a COP to produce "subsequent agreements" that interpret existing treaty provisions. These interpretations would effectively become binding international law, providing the missing operational detail that the OST's broad principles lack. A COP would also provide a recurring forum for technical negotiators and stakeholders to address contentious issues incrementally, building institutional memory and diplomatic relationships over time.
The COP model has significant precedents in international environmental law—the Paris Agreement and the Convention on Biological Diversity both operate through COP structures that allow for ongoing negotiation and adaptation. Its application to space governance would represent a significant institutional innovation, but one that builds on established legal mechanisms rather than requiring the creation of entirely new institutions.
"A space COP would not solve every problem, but it would create the institutional infrastructure for solving problems as they arise—which is precisely what the current framework lacks." — Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2026
The Mars-Specific Governance Challenges
Jurisdictional Complexity in Multi-National Settlements
The OST establishes that states retain jurisdiction over their nationals and registered space objects on celestial bodies. In a Martian settlement involving nationals of multiple states, operating equipment registered in different jurisdictions, this creates a jurisdictional patchwork that existing legal frameworks cannot resolve.
Consider a scenario in which a dispute arises between a U.S. national and a European national over the use of a shared resource extraction facility. Which legal system applies? Which court has jurisdiction? What enforcement mechanisms are available? The OST provides no answers to these questions, and the Artemis Accords, while they establish principles of transparency and coordination, do not create dispute resolution mechanisms adequate for the governance of permanent settlements.
Planetary Protection and the Contamination Question
Mars is the most likely candidate in the solar system for the discovery of extraterrestrial life—either extant microbial life in subsurface environments or evidence of past life in geological records. The OST's planetary protection provisions require states to avoid harmful contamination of celestial bodies, but they do not specify what "harmful contamination" means in the context of a permanent human settlement, which would inevitably introduce Earth microorganisms to the Martian environment.
The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) maintains planetary protection guidelines that are more specific than the OST's provisions, but these guidelines are not legally binding and have not been updated to address the governance of permanent human settlements. The tension between the scientific imperative to preserve Mars for biological investigation and the practical reality of human habitation is a governance challenge that has not been adequately addressed.
Resource Extraction and the Non-Appropriation Principle
The governance of Mars cannot wait for a perfect legal framework. It must be built incrementally, through institutions that can adapt as the technology and the geopolitical landscape evolve.
The most legally contested aspect of Mars governance is the question of resource extraction. The OST's prohibition on national appropriation is clear in its application to territorial claims, but its application to resource extraction is disputed. The U.S. position, reflected in the 2015 Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act and the Artemis Accords, is that resource extraction does not constitute appropriation—that a company can own the resources it extracts from Mars without claiming sovereignty over the territory from which they were extracted.
Critics, including Russia, China, and a number of developing nations, argue that this interpretation effectively allows wealthy nations and their commercial actors to appropriate the resources of celestial bodies while maintaining the legal fiction of non-appropriation. They argue that the "province of all mankind" principle in Article I requires that the benefits of resource extraction be shared equitably, not captured by the first actors to arrive.
This dispute is not merely academic. As Mars missions move from planning to execution, the question of who has the right to extract and own Martian resources will become a source of genuine geopolitical tension. The absence of an agreed governance framework means that this tension will be managed through power politics rather than law.
Governance Proposals: What Experts Are Recommending
Near-Term Priorities
The governance research community has identified several near-term priorities that could reduce the risk of governance failure without requiring the politically difficult task of amending the OST or negotiating a new treaty.
First, the development of a multilateral framework for space traffic management that addresses the growing problem of orbital congestion. The current absence of international protocols for satellite maneuvering and collision avoidance creates risks that are already materialising in low Earth orbit and will become more acute as the number of space objects increases.
Second, the establishment of a UN-based forum for ongoing dialogue on space resource governance. The UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) provides an existing institutional framework, but its mandate and resources are inadequate for the governance challenges of the commercial space age. Strengthening COPUOS and expanding its mandate to address resource governance would provide a multilateral alternative to the bilateral Artemis Accords framework.
Third, the development of planetary protection standards that are adequate for the governance of permanent human settlements. The current COSPAR guidelines were designed for robotic missions; they need to be updated to address the fundamentally different contamination risks posed by human habitation.
Long-Term Architecture
In the longer term, the governance of Mars will require institutional innovation that goes beyond the incremental updating of existing frameworks. The phased development model proposed by some governance scholars—moving from robotic reconnaissance to short-term human missions to permanent settlement, with governance structures evolving alongside technological maturity—provides a useful framework for thinking about how institutions can be built incrementally rather than designed in advance for a future that cannot be fully anticipated.
The COP model proposed by Sandler and others at the Belfer Center offers the most promising near-term path to updating space governance without the political impossibility of treaty amendment. By creating a recurring forum for the interpretation and elaboration of existing treaty provisions, a space COP could provide the institutional infrastructure for addressing governance challenges as they arise, rather than attempting to anticipate them all in advance.
"The governance of Mars cannot wait for a perfect legal framework. It must be built incrementally, through institutions that can adapt as the technology and the geopolitical landscape evolve." — UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, Working Paper, 2026
Conclusion: The Urgency of Institutional Innovation
The data presented in this brief tells a consistent story: the governance of Mars is lagging dangerously behind the ambitions of the actors who plan to go there. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty provides a foundational framework that is inadequate for the governance of commercial resource extraction, permanent human settlements, and autonomous AI systems operating across the solar system. The Artemis Accords represent a significant but non-binding attempt to update space norms, and their rejection by Russia and China creates the risk of a bifurcated governance landscape in which competing frameworks cannot be reconciled.
The window for institutional innovation is narrowing. As crewed Mars missions move from planning to execution, the governance decisions that are made—or not made—in the next five to ten years will shape the legal and political landscape of Mars for generations. The COP model, the strengthening of COPUOS, and the development of adequate planetary protection standards for human settlements are not merely academic proposals; they are urgent practical necessities.
The history of international governance suggests that institutions are most effectively built before crises occur, not in response to them. The governance of Mars is a problem that can still be addressed proactively. The question is whether the international community has the political will to do so before the first humans land on the red planet and the absence of governance becomes impossible to ignore.
