Outer space, explained.
The rocket carrying Artemis II to orbit the Moon launches from Florida (Jing Ge)
The Artemis Accords represent an opportunity for middle powers, including Australia, to establish a role in lunar governance.
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Moon governance in the spotlight after Artemis IIMoon governance in the spotlight after Artemis II
In 1969, when the words “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” were broadcast to the world, anxious onlookers on Earth knew Apollo 11 had successfully landed on the Moon. From that moment on, the Moon was no longer an unreachable celestial body, but a place humanity had actually reached.
Fifty-seven years later, NASA’s Artemis II has once again carried out a crewed lunar mission . The ultimate goal of the Artemis program is to establish a permanent base at the Moon’s south pole and use it as a stepping stone to Mars. This signals a shift in lunar activity from exploratory first steps to a new phase focused on sustained access, long-term use, and rule-making.
Today’s competition over the Moon is one of governance, made up of three dimensions: the ability to access the Moon on a sustained basis, occupying key locations, and rule-making.
The Moon is being reimagined as a place that can be used over the long term. Growing attention is being paid to the lunar south pole, with water ice resources and the Moon’s potential role in deep-space resupply becoming increasingly important. Water ice is not only essential for potable water, but can also be split into oxygen and hydrogen to provide breathable air for astronauts and fuel for spacecraft. The Moon also contains critical minerals: iron, titanium, rare earth elements, and helium-3. All this places the Moon within a broader vision of space infrastructure, as a staging point for deep-space activities, a testing platform, and a logistical frontier. The more consistently a country can access the Moon, the more likely it is to gain an early advantage in the future architecture of deep-space activity.
Once a long-term presence and the use of resources become realistic goals, competition will quickly develop over a limited number of high-value areas. Although the Outer Space Treaty prohibits states from claiming sovereignty over the Moon, this does not mean that there is no spatial competition on the lunar surface. The reason is simple: the Moon is not a uniform environment. Limited areas near the lunar south pole are suitable for long-term operations, proximate to resources, relatively well illuminated on elevated terrain, and favourable for communications and energy support.
As lunar activity becomes more routine, the demand for rules will become more explicit.
This makes early access to these key areas a central question in future lunar governance. Such an advantage may not take the form of a formal sovereignty claim but it could gradually produce a de facto priority position through infrastructure deployment, the expansion of operational radius, security requirements, and mission coordination. States may not need to declare ownership of areas on the Moon to be best positioned to exert influence.
As states, institutions, and commercial actors become more involved in lunar activities, competition about rule-making will emerge. How should resource extraction be defined? How should the boundaries between different bases be coordinated? How should so-called “safety zones” or mission protection areas be understood? Which actions count as normal operations, and which may be seen as exclusionary expansion? These questions may appear technical on the surface, but they are fundamental questions of governance. As lunar activity becomes more routine, the demand for rules will become more explicit, and those rules will inevitably reflect differences in interests, risk perceptions, and power competition.
Artemis II lifted off at 6:35pm on 1 April 2026 (Michael DeMocker/NASA)
Although the Artemis Accords provide a set of shared principles to strengthen the governance of the civil exploration and use of outer space, lunar governance is unlikely to emerge first in the form of a single, complete and universally accepted legal regime. A more likely scenario is that rules will be generated by first movers: states that enter first, deploy first, and coordinate first, and then consolidate these operational practices into norms.
In this process, the role of middle powers deserves particular attention. As signatories to the Artemis Accords, countries including Australia are no longer merely observers of lunar competition. They are being drawn into an institutional process centred on the coordination of principles, cooperative implementation, and the definition of operational boundaries. Through cooperative missions, technical standards, security arrangements, and operational practices they will gradually become part of the formation of a future framework for lunar governance. For these middle powers, the lunar competition is no longer just whether to join a particular initiative, but how to position themselves early in a governance structure that is still taking shape.
The Moon may still appear distant in the sky. But competition over its governance has already begun.
About the author
Jing Ge
Jing Ge is an instructor at Florida International University.
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