Strange Facts About Space Law

The Final Frontier of Law

The concept of space law often sounds like science fiction, a solution for a future problem involving asteroid miners and interstellar colonies. The reality is that space law is a very real, complex, and sometimes strange body of international agreements, forged during the height of the Cold War. It’s a legal framework built for two superpowers, which is now being stretched to its limits by private corporations like SpaceX, mega-constellations, and the dawn of a new resource race.

The foundational document is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, officially the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. While it provides a solid basis, its gray areas and omissions create a landscape of legal peculiarities. This article examines the stranger facts and unresolved questions that define the law of the final frontier.

You Can’t Own the Moon, But Can You Mine It?

One of the most famous principles of space law is non-appropriation. Article II of the Outer Space Treaty is explicit: “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”

This means no country can plant a flag on the Moon and claim it as a 51st state or a new province. It’s designated as the “province of all mankind.” This seems straightforward, but it contains a massive ambiguity that now sits at the heart of modern space policy. The treaty forbids claiming sovereignty over the land, but it says nothing about “appropriation” of the resources found there.

This omission was not an accident. In the 1960s, space resources were a distant theoretical concept. Today, lunar water-ice and helium-3 are seen as immensely valuable. This has created a legal split.

In 1979, the United Nations attempted to close this loophole with the Moon Treaty. This treaty declared that the Moon and its natural resources are the “common heritage of mankind.” It proposed an international regime that would govern the exploitation of lunar resources, with an emphasis on equitable sharing of the benefits, particularly with developing nations.

This idea was a commercial non-starter for the major space-faring nations. The United States, Russia, and China never ratified it. They argued that such a regime would stifle private investment. Why would a company spend billions to build a lunar miner if it had to share the profits with the entire world?

The strange reality is that the Moon Treaty is considered failed law. Only a handful of nations have ratified it, and none are major space powers.

This led the United States to forge its own path. In 2015, Congress passed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. This law explicitly states that U.S. citizens are entitled to possess, own, transport, and sell any space resources they obtain. It’s a direct legal assertion that “finders keepers” applies to asteroids and lunar regolith.

More recently, NASA has reinforced this position through the Artemis Accords, an international agreement outlining principles for the next phase of lunar exploration. A key provision of the Accords asserts that the extraction of space resources is not a “national appropriation” under the Outer Space Treaty.

The Accords also introduce “safety zones,” areas where one signatory can conduct operations and request that others keep a safe distance. Critics argue this is a “strange” way of creating de facto property rights without technically claiming sovereignty. You may not own the land, but you can call a “safety zone” around your mine, effectively giving you exclusive use.

We are left with two completely opposed legal philosophies operating at the same time: one, held by a few nations, that the Moon’s resources belong to everyone, and another, led by the U.S. and its partners, that private companies can mine and sell those resources for their own profit.

Where Does Space Actually Begin?

It’s one of the most basic questions in space law, and strangely, it has no legal answer. There is no internationally recognized boundary defining where a nation’s sovereign airspace ends and where international outer space begins.

This isn’t just a philosophical question. It has immense practical consequences. Every nation on Earth has complete and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory. A French commercial jet can’t fly over Canada without permission. However, a Chinese spy satellite can fly over the United States (and does so constantly), and it’s perfectly legal under the Outer Space Treaty’s principle of “free use.”

So, where is the line?

The most commonly accepted scientific guideline is the Kármán line, typically defined as 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) above sea level. This is the altitude where traditional aeronautics ends – the air becomes so thin that an aircraft would have to travel at orbital velocity just to generate enough aerodynamic lift to stay aloft. At that point, it’s effectively an orbiter.

But the Kármán line is a scientific convention, not a legal definition. Nations have never formally agreed to it in a treaty.

This ambiguity is, in many ways, deliberate. During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States benefited from the lack of a defined border. It allowed them to launch their first spy satellites, like the Coronaprogram, without them being considered illegal acts of espionage or violations of sovereign airspace. They established a precedent of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

This legal void continues today. It creates strange scenarios for new technologies like suborbital space tourism. When a vehicle from Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin rockets passengers to the edge of space, does it briefly leave the sovereign territory of the U.S. and enter an international zone before landing again? If it were to launch in one country and land in another, what laws would govern its passage?

The legal debate is split between “spatialists,” who argue for a fixed boundary (like the Kármán line), and “functionalists,” who argue the legal regime should depend on the activity or function of the craft, not its altitude. A rocket ascending to orbit is a “space activity” from the moment it leaves the pad, while an airplane is an “air activity” even if it briefly passes 100 km.

For now, the world operates without a defined border, relying on customary practice that satellites are in “space” and airplanes are in the “air.”

The Cosmic Traffic Warden: Who Owns an Orbital Slot?

Not all orbits are created equal. The most valuable piece of orbital real estate is the Geostationary Orbit (GEO), a single, thin ring approximately 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) directly above the equator.

What makes it so special? A satellite in GEO orbits at the exact same speed that the Earth rotates. From the ground, the satellite appears to hang motionless in a fixed point in the sky. This makes it perfect for broadcasting television signals and for weather satellites, as a ground-based antenna doesn’t need to track it.

Because this orbit is a single circle, it’s a finite natural resource. Satellites in GEO must be spaced out to avoid interfering with each other’s signals. This means there is a limited number of “orbital slots.”

Who gets to assign these slots? The gatekeeper is a United Nations specialized agency called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The ITU manages the global radio-frequency spectrum and satellite orbits. It operates largely on a “first-come, first-served” basis. A country (or a company working through its national administration) registers its intent to use a specific orbital slot and frequency, and the ITU coordinates to ensure it doesn’t interfere with existing satellites.

This system created tension. In 1976, eight equatorial countries – Colombia, Ecuador, Congo, Zaire (now DRC), Uganda, Kenya, Gabon, and Indonesia – signed the Bogotá Declaration.

In this declaration, they made a strange and bold legal claim: they declared sovereignty over the segments of the geostationary orbit that passed directly above their territories. They argued that the orbit was not “outer space” in the traditional sense, but a unique natural resource linked to the geography of the nations on the equator.

The international community, particularly the established space powers, flatly rejected this claim. They argued that the Outer Space Treaty clearly states that outer space cannot be appropriated by claims of sovereignty. Since GEO is unquestionably in outer space (far beyond the Kármán line), the declaration had no legal standing.

While the Bogotá Declaration failed, it remains a “strange” footnote in space law that highlights the fundamental tension between the nations who first developed space technology and the developing nations who feel locked out of its finite resources. The ITU system remains in place, a complex bureaucratic process of assigning rights to an orbit that, by law, no one can own.

Crime and Punishment on the High Frontier

What happens if an astronaut commits a crime in space? If an American astronaut assaults a Russian cosmonaut inside the Japanese-owned module of the International Space Station (ISS), who has jurisdiction?

This isn’t a hypothetical. The ISS is a sprawling complex built and operated by a partnership of five space agencies: NASA (USA), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and the Canadian Space Agency (Canada). The legal framework governing it is the 1998 ISS Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA).

The IGA solves the jurisdiction problem with a strange, multi-layered approach. The primary principle is based on nationality. Each partner state retains criminal jurisdiction over its own personnel in or on any part of the station.

In our scenario, because the alleged perpetrator is an American astronaut, the United States would have primary jurisdiction, even though the crime happened in a Japanese module and the victim was Russian. U.S. federal law applies to that astronaut as if they were on a U.S. vessel on the high seas.

But it gets more complex. The IGA allows for a “consultation” process. Japan, as the owner of the module where the crime occurred, or Russia, as the state of the victim, could request that the U.S. cede jurisdiction. If the U.S. declined, it would be obligated to consult with its partners before proceeding with its own legal process. The agreement even includes provisions for extradition between the partner states, as if they were separate territories.

This legal framework was tested (though not with a violent crime) in 2019 in what was reported as the first-ever allegation of a crime committed in space. Astronaut Anne McClain was accused by her estranged spouse of improperly accessing their joint bank account from a computer on the ISS. NASA’s Office of Inspector General investigated the claim. McClain was later cleared, with the investigation finding no wrongdoing, but the incident established that Earth-bound criminal laws – in this case, regarding financial access – extend fully to U.S. citizens in orbit.

The ISS model is specific. The legal situation for a future private station, or a multi-national base on the Moon, would require entirely new treaties, likely following this same complex, nationality-based jurisdiction.

A Duty to Rescue Everyone, Even Your Enemy

One of the most idealistic and strangest provisions in all of space law comes from the 1968 Rescue Agreement. This treaty, formally the Agreement on the Rescue of Astronauts, the Return of Astronauts and the Return of Objects Launched into Outer Space, was a direct product of the Cold War.

The treaty designates astronauts as “envoys of mankind.” This elevated status places them above terrestrial politics.

The core obligation is absolute. If a state learns that astronauts have crash-landed in its territory, or are in distress in any other place (like the high seas), it must “immediately take all possible steps to rescue them and render them all necessary assistance.”

This is a remarkably strong humanitarian obligation. Imagine a scenario in 1970: a Soviet Soyuz capsule malfunctions and crash-lands in rural Wyoming. Under the Rescue Agreement, the United States would not be permitted to treat the cosmonauts as spies or hold them for intelligence debriefing. The U.S. would be legally bound to find them, provide medical care, and return them “safely and promptly” to the Soviet Union.

This same principle applies to space objects. If a piece of a spacecraft lands in another country, that country must, upon request, recover and return it to the “launching authority.” The launching authority is required to pay for the recovery costs. This provision was famously (and humorously) invoked when pieces of Skylab crashed in Australia in 1979. A U.S. radio station paid the fine for littering that a local municipality had issued to NASA.

The “envoys of mankind” concept is a strange, humanist pillar in a body of law otherwise concerned with liability, sovereignty, and military advantage. It ensures that no matter how bad relations get on Earth, astronauts in peril are considered citizens of the planet, not just of their home nation.

Celestial Contamination and Planetary Protection

Space law isn’t just about people and hardware; it’s also about microbes. The Outer Space Treaty (Article IX) obligates states to explore space “so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter.”

This creates two distinct legal responsibilities, known as “forward contamination” and “back contamination.”

Forward contamination is the idea that we must protect other celestial bodies from us. The scientific body that sets the guidelines for this is the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). COSPAR categorizes missions based on their destination and purpose.

A simple flyby of Venus has few restrictions. But a lander going to a “special region” on Mars – an area where liquid water is thought to exist and Earthly life might be able to survive – is subject to the most stringent sterilization procedures. Rovers like Curiosity and Perseverance are assembled in “clean rooms” and baked to kill as many microbes as possible.

The legal and ethical reasoning is simple: if we discover microbial life on Mars, we need to be certain it’s Martian life, not just a hardy bacterium that hitched a ride from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The stranger and more dramatic concept is back contamination: protecting Earth from space.

This was treated as a serious legal and public health threat during the Apollo program. We had no idea if the Moon harbored “moon germs” that could be catastrophic to Earth’s biosphere.

Following the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, the astronauts – Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins – were immediately placed into quarantine. Before exiting the command module, they were given Biological Isolation Garments (BIGs). They were transported to a Mobile Quarantine Facility (a modified Airstream trailer) and then flown to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, where they remained in isolation for 21 days. The lunar rocks they brought back were handled in sealed glove boxes.

This entire procedure was done to comply with the Outer Space Treaty and domestic U.S. law. It seems almost bizarre today, knowing the Moon is sterile, but it sets the legal and logistical precedent for a future Mars sample return mission. Any material brought back from Mars will be legally treated as an extreme biohazard, requiring a dedicated containment facility, until it can be proven safe.

Who Pays When Space Junk Falls on Your House?

While many parts of space law are abstract, the 1972 Space Liability Convention is concrete. It directly answers the question: who pays for damage caused by space objects?

The answer depends on where the damage occurs.

The strangest and most powerful provision of the treaty is “absolute liability.” If a space object (or any of its component parts) causes damage on the surface of the Earth or to an aircraft in flight, the “Launching State” is absolutely liable for that damage.

“Absolute liability” means the victim doesn’t have to prove any negligence or fault. They only need to prove that the object was from the Launching State and that it caused the damage. If a booster stage from a French rocket lands on a Brazilian farmhouse, France pays for the farmhouse.

The definition of “Launching State” is also incredibly broad. It includes:

1. The state that launched the object.
2. The state that procured the launch (the customer).
3. The state from whose territory the launch took place.
4. The state from whose facility the launch took place.

A single launch can, and often does, have multiple Launching States. They are “jointly and severally” liable, meaning the victim can demand full compensation from any of them.

This treaty has only been formally invoked once. In 1978, the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954 malfunctioned and re-entered the atmosphere, scattering radioactive debris from its onboard nuclear reactor across Canada’s Northwest Territories. Canada launched a massive cleanup operation and billed the Soviet Unionapproximately $6 million CAD for the costs. The Soviets eventually paid about $3 million in a final settlement.

This “absolute liability” standard is a powerful protection for people on the ground.

Strangely, the standard changes completely for damage that occurs in space. If one satellite collides with another satellite in orbit, the “absolute liability” standard disappears. Instead, the treaty uses a “fault-based” standard.

This means the owner of the damaged satellite must prove the other satellite’s owner was “at fault” to get compensation. This is almost impossible. Proving negligence in an orbital collision traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, with no witnesses and often with both objects destroyed, is a legal nightmare.

This was tested by the 2009 satellite collision, the first major in-orbit crash. A functioning U.S. communications satellite, Iridium 33, collided with a defunct, non-maneuverable Russian satellite, Kosmos-2251. The collision destroyed both and created thousands of new pieces of space debris.

Because the collision occurred in space, the “fault” standard applied. Was Iridium at fault for not moving its active satellite? Or was Russia at fault for leaving a dead satellite in a busy orbit? No fault was ever assigned, and no compensation was ever paid.

The Unsolved Problem of Space Debris

The 2009 satellite collision highlights the single biggest gap in space law: space debris. Low Earth Orbit (LEO)is becoming dangerously cluttered with defunct satellites, spent rocket stages, and fragments from past collisions.

The legal strangeness here is one of property rights. Under the Outer Space Treaty and the Registration Convention, a space object remains the property of its Launching State forever. Jurisdiction and control over the object “is retained… while in outer space.”

This means a 30-year-old, completely dead Soviet satellite is not “abandoned” salvage. It is still, legally, the property of the Russian Federation.

This creates a massive legal barrier for companies that want to clean up orbital debris. A company like Astroscale, which is developing technology for active debris removal, can’t simply go grab a defunct European rocket upper stage without the express permission of the European Space Agency or its member states.

Touching another nation’s satellite, even if it’s “junk,” could be interpreted as a violation of their property rights or even an aggressive act. This means that to clean up the orbit, we need not only the technology, but also a complex series of bilateral agreements, permissions, and contracts for every single piece of large debris.

The law, written to protect satellites from being hijacked during the Cold War, now inadvertently protects the junk that threatens all active satellites.

Weapons in Space: The “Peaceful Purposes” Loophole

A common misconception is that the Outer Space Treaty banned all weapons in space. It did not.

Article IV of the treaty has two distinct parts. The first part is a total ban: Nations agree not to place in orbit around the Earth, install on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise station in outer space any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).

The second part is more specific: “The Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used… exclusively for peaceful purposes.”

The combination of these clauses creates strange and significant legal loopholes.

First, the total ban only applies to WMDs. It does not forbid conventional weapons in orbit. A satellite carrying a machine gun, a laser, or a kinetic bombardment weapon (the so-called “rods from god”) would not violate the treaty.

Second, the “exclusively for peaceful purposes” clause applies only to the Moon and other celestial bodies. It does not apply to “outer space” itself – to the vacuum of orbit.

This leaves open the general question of military activity in Earth orbit. What does “peaceful” mean? Here, nations disagree. The United States has long held that “peaceful” means “non-aggressive.” This interpretation allows for military support functions, like reconnaissance (spy) satellites, military communications, and navigation systems like the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is operated by the US Space Force. Satellites from the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) are a legal and routine part of space.

Other nations have argued “peaceful” should mean “non-military.” This debate has never been resolved.

The strangest gap is the legality of Anti-satellite weapons (ASATs). The treaty doesn’t ban them. While a nation using one might be condemned for creating debris (violating the spirit of Article IX’s contamination clause), the weapon itself is not illegal. Russia, China, the United States, and India have all successfully tested ASATs, demonstrating a capability that is not forbidden by the foundational text of space law.

You Can’t Buy a Star, But You Can Sell a Meteorite

The Outer Space Treaty‘s non-appropriation principle is clear. But this hasn’t stopped a proliferation of “star-naming” companies. These registries claim to sell you the rights to name a star for a fee, complete with a fancy certificate.

Legally, this is a novelty gift, not a transaction. The only organization with the authority to name celestial bodies and their features (stars, planets, asteroids, craters) is the International Astronomical Union (IAU), an international body of professional astronomers. The IAU does not sell naming rights. The name you “buy” from a private registry is not and will never be recognized by the scientific community.

A stranger legal question arises with meteorites. A meteorite is a piece of a celestial body – an asteroid, the Moon, or even Mars – that survives passage through the atmosphere and lands on Earth.

While that object was in space, it was part of a celestial body and could not be appropriated. But what happens the moment it lands on Earth?

At that point, space law ceases to apply, and terrestrial property law takes over. In most jurisdictions, including the United States, the law is simple: if a meteorite lands on your private land, you own it. It is considered part of the real estate. If it’s found on public land, the rules are more complex but often allow the finder to keep it.

This creates the bizarre legal paradox that a rock from Mars is the “province of all mankind” while it’s on Mars, but the moment it lands in your backyard, it’s your private property to sell to the highest bidder.

The Future: Traffic Jams and Legal Voids

Space law is a 1960s framework confronting 21st-century problems. The most pressing is the rise of mega-constellations, like Starlink by SpaceX, which involve launching tens of thousands of satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

This creates an unprecedented traffic density. Strangely, there is no binding international system for Space Traffic Management (STM).

There is no global air traffic control for space. The US Space Force provides the world’s most comprehensive tracking data (via the public-facing Space-Track.org), warning operators of potential collisions. But these are warnings, not commands. There is no international authority that can order a satellite to “hold,” “change orbit,” or “de-orbit.” All coordination is voluntary.

This is just one of many unresolved “strange” questions. What happens when the first child is born on a Mars colony? Their citizenship won’t be “Martian.” It will almost certainly be determined by their parents’ nationality (jus sanguinis) or the laws of the nation that registered the habitat (jus soli, or “right of the soil,” applied to the structure).

If a person dies en route to Mars, which court probates their will? If an autonomous AI controlling a satellite decides to maneuver and causes a collision, who is at fault? The company, the programmer, or the launching state?

The current body of law doesn’t have clear answers.

Summary

The body of space law is a fascinating product of its time. It is simultaneously idealistic, envisioning astronauts as “envoys of mankind,” and pragmatic, creating loopholes for military operations. It is robust in some areas, like liability for ground damage, and alarmingly silent in others, like space debris, resource rights, and orbital traffic control.

The “strange” nature of space law comes from this tension: a 20th-century treaty system, built on principles of national sovereignty and international commons, is now grappling with a 21st-century reality of commercialization, privatization, and resource competition. The legal voids and ambiguities that were once convenient are now the central battlegrounds for the future of humanity’s expansion into the cosmos.