Moon and Mars Governance

The New Moon Race

After decades of relative neglect, the Moon is once again the focus of great-power competition. NASA's Artemis program aims to establish a sustained human presence on the lunar surface by the late 2020s, including the Lunar Gateway space station in orbit. China and Russia announced plans for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a competing base on the Moon's south pole. India, Japan, and South Korea have all conducted or planned lunar missions.

The Moon's south pole is the prize. Permanently shadowed craters there contain water ice that could be converted to drinking water, oxygen, and rocket fuel — making the south pole the most strategically valuable real estate off Earth. The Outer Space Treaty prohibits sovereignty claims, but it says nothing about who gets to build a base where, or who controls access to the best ice deposits.

The Artemis Accords vs. the ILRS

In 2020, the United States launched the Artemis Accords — a set of bilateral agreements between NASA and partner nations establishing principles for lunar exploration. As of 2025, over 40 nations have signed. The Accords affirm the Outer Space Treaty but go further: they endorse the extraction of space resources (consistent with the 2015 US SPACE Act), require transparency, and establish 'safety zones' around lunar operations.

China and Russia are not signatories. They view the Artemis Accords as a US-led attempt to set the rules of lunar governance outside the UN framework. Their ILRS project is an alternative vision — multilateral in name but led by Beijing. The result is two competing lunar governance frameworks, split roughly along geopolitical lines reminiscent of Cold War-era space competition.

The key tension is over 'safety zones.' The Accords envision areas around lunar bases where other missions must coordinate before operating. Critics argue this is sovereignty by another name — if the US establishes a base near the richest ice deposits and declares a safety zone, it effectively controls access to the most valuable resource on the Moon.

Two Frameworks, One Moon

Lunar governance is now organized around two rival coalitions rather than a single UN regime. This comparison shows how they line up:

Worked example — the safety-zone dilemma at the south pole. Suppose NASA and partners land first at a permanently shadowed crater rich in water ice and declare a safety zone around it, requiring others to coordinate before approaching. The Accords insist this is a temporary deconfliction measure, not a territorial claim, and consistent with Article II. But if the best ice is concentrated in a few craters and the first arrival rings them with safety zones, a latecomer like an ILRS mission could find every prime site effectively spoken for — sovereignty in function if not in name. This is why China and Russia treat the Accords as rule-setting outside the UN, and why the south pole, not Mars, is the near-term flashpoint.