The Outer Space Treaty was first signed by The United States of America, The United Kingdom and The Soviet Union in 1967, and is currently signed and/or ratified by all the world's spacefaring nations, and by many of its non-spacefaring nations.

The treaty followed on several United Nations resolutions, as well as the 1961 Antarctic Treaty declaring Antarctica to be a neutral territory used for scientific explanation; and the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. It was also first signed during the height of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, two years before the United States' moon landing. Although the treaty has 17 articles, they can be summed up in three main areas:

  • Space shall be relatively demilitarized. Membership states can not put weapons of mass destruction in space, nor can they build military bases in space. However, since much space exploration at the time (and to the present day) is done with military equipment and military personnel, it is acceptable to use military means for peaceful exploration of space.
  • Space shall be neutral. The United States might have a flag on the moon, but it is purely ceremonial. Unlike the colonial period, membership states can not claim territory in space either by discovering it or occupying it. While states are allowed to build bases on the moon (or any other celestial body), they are required to give access to other states that wish to visit them.
  • Member states shall, in general, assist each other. Some of the articles of the treaty are just diplomatic boilerplate, but it also includes provisions that states must assist each other's astronauts, and also must alert each other to any hazards to space travel they find.

The Space Treaty is relatively non-controversial, especially since with the waning of the Cold War, the militarization of space became less of an issue. Since no nation has managed to build a permanent moon base, the provisions requiring nations to allow observers into their facilities has never become relevant. There are two questions about the Space Treaty that could cause issues in the future: the first is what happens if a non-signatory did at some point land a man on the moon and used that to claim the moon as their territory. While it is unlikely that such non-signatories as Chad or Cambodia could do so, the treaty also does allow withdrawal: if the United States withdrew from the treaty and then claimed the moon as its territory, it seems unlikely that its claim would be accepted. However, there is nothing in International Law outside of this treaty that prohibits such a claim from being made. The second question (again, seemingly theoretical) is how the treaty would hold if a colony on the moon or Mars wished to become self-governing. The treaty would seem to reject the ability of future colonists to claim sovereignty. However, by the time that humanity reaches that point, the rules of diplomacy and international law will probably have evolved far beyond the legal concepts of 1967.


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