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The United States and China are racing to establish a foothold on the moon, and international space law is not equipped to govern the competition, space law expert Michelle L.D. Hanlon said at a Harvard Radcliffe Institute symposium Monday.
Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, argued that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty is too vague to settle disputes over lunar territory or the growing debris in Earth’s orbit. She called on nations to agree on clearer rules and greater transparency.
“Make no mistake, we are in a race,” Hanlon said. “This is a race to the starting line. It’s not a finishing line.”
Hanlon spoke on the opening panel of “Living Beyond Earth: Our Next Giant Leap,” Radcliffe’s 2026 Gellert Family Science Symposium, alongside Ariel Ekblaw, founder and CEO of the Aurelia Institute, and Dava J. Newman, an MIT astronautics professor and former NASA deputy administrator.
The core principle of the Outer Space Treaty, Hanlon said, is freedom of exploration and use.
“You can do whatever you want in space. Period,” she said. “If you have $8,000, you can send whatever you want to the moon, and there’s no law against it.”
Beyond banning nuclear weapons and other mass destruction weapons in space, the treaty mainly requires nations to act with “due regard” for others’ interests — a standard Hanlon said has no “bright line rules.”
That vagueness rewards whoever arrives first, she argued. A nation that reaches the lunar south pole, where most of the moon’s ice is believed to lie, could demand that rivals stay 30 kilometers away to avoid kicking up dust.
“We need to have a foothold on the moon because that is where we learn how to become spacefaring,” Hanlon said.
“There’s someone in China right now on a panel, maybe earlier this morning, saying the same thing I am,” she added.
Hanlon pointed to the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, launched in 2020 to interpret the Outer Space Treaty, as a competing vision for space. Moderator Nicole Mortillaro, a CBC News science reporter, noted that 76 nations have signed the accords, while China and Russia have not.
Hanlon mentioned there is “no law against building a nuclear reactor on the moon.” She called the United States’ recent confirmation of having weapons in space “a step towards transparency,” noting that China and Russia have them too.
As Earth’s orbit becomes increasingly crowded, she warned of Kessler syndrome — a scenario where debris collisions create even more debris. She noted that China has applied to launch 200,000 satellites and Rwanda 280,000.
“We need rules of the road for orbit,” Hanlon stressed. “Due regard isn’t going to cut it.”
“Let’s not make the moon and our orbit another garbage patch like we have in our deep seas,” she added. “Let’s do this cleanly and sustainably.”
