As a conclusion, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, an international treaty binding the parties to use outer space only for peaceful purposes, is draft treaties on the uses of outer space reconciled during several months of negotiation in the Legal Subcommittee of the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. The result of this spirit of cooperation was also reflected in the same year by the adoption by the General Assembly of the United Nations of an important resolution on the question of disarmament general and complete (1963). This Treaty shall be open to all States for signature.

I concur with Mr. Listner, although I will put it more factually: the Harvard astrophysicist is not a legal scholar. GAZETTE: What is so special about the ridges? On December 19, 1966, the United Nations unanimously adopted a treaty, opened for signature on January 27, 1967, declaring that the exploration and use of outer space must be carried out in the interest and for the good of humanity, any discrimination between States being excluded. Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 sets forth that “States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. Because outer space was an environment of a new nature, “extraordinary in many respects” and “unique from the legal point of view”, and because its human conquest started in the tense climate of the 1950s, the international community had to rapidly legislate about it. But a new paper argues that the settlement of other worlds would take off if the government could provide one thing: property rights. Duly certified copies of this Treaty shall be transmitted by the Depositary Governments to the Governments of the signatory and acceding States.

Among its principles, it bars states party to the treaty from placing weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit, installing them on the Moon or any other celestial body, or otherwise stationing them in outer space. Just ten years ago in 2007, China shot one of its polar orbit weather satellites FY-1C, with a ballistic missile leaving tons of debris in the Earth’s orbit. Among the broad general principles that should govern the space activities of States, the use of outer space for peaceful purposes, mentioned in the Preamble to the Outer Space Treaty and in several of its provisions, has been in fact, several times since 1957, stated in previous General Assembly resolutions of the United Nations (in 1957, 1958, 1959, and more particularly in 1961). Who Owns Space? © 2020 Condé Nast. But Simberg's paper suggests the time is ripe. The Outer Space Treaty bars any nation — and by extension, corporation — from owning property on a celestial body, but a loophole in the pact may amount to the same thing, warns a Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) researcher.

This Treaty shall be registered by the Depositary Governments pursuant to Article 102 of the Charter of the United Nations”. You can imagine a single mountain peak near the south pole, going round and round as the moon rotates, illuminated by the sun.