Who Owns the Moon? - Extraterrestrial Aspects of Land and Mineral Resources Ownership (Electronic book text)

This work investigates the permissibility and viability of property rights on the celestial bodies, particularly the extraterrestrial aspects of land and mineral resources ownership. In lay terms, it aims to find an answer to the question 'Who owns the Moon?'. The first chapter critically analyses and dismantles with legal arguments the issue of sale of extraterrestrial real estate, after having perused some of the trivial claims of celestial bodies ownership. The only consequence these claims have on the plane of space law is to highlight the need for a better regulation of extraterrestrial landed property rights. Next, the work addresses the apparent silence of the law in the field of extraterrestrial landed property, scrutinizing whether the factual situation on the extraterrestrial realms calls for legal regulations.The sources of law are examined in their dual dimension - that is, the facts that have caused and shaped the law of extraterrestrial real estate, and the norms which express this law. It is found that the norms and rules regarding property rights in the celestial realms are rather limited, failing to define basic concepts such as celestial body. The following chapter examines precisely this issue, pondering whether asteroids and comets are immovable land-like territorial extensions that cannot be legally appropriated, or floating movable goods, capable of being captured and reduced into private ownership. The employment of the spatialist and functionalist approaches, the use of the criterion of actual movability from orbit by human action, and original theories such as the analogy between the legal status of asteroids and icebergs, are considered, concluding that some extraterrestrial resources are not, legally speaking, celestial bodies.An examination follows of the relationship between appropriation under international law, and civil law appropriation, namely whether the non-appropriation principle in the Outer Space Treaty on the international plane, results also in the prohibition of the appropriation of the celestial bodies on the private property rights plane. It is offered that, while appropriation of land can exist outside the sphere of sovereignty, its survival is dependent upon backing from a sovereign entity, yet such endorsement would be unlawful as a means of national appropriation.