** 106 Pages - Softcover ** Governing the Moon: A HISTORY Stephen S. Buono NASA Author Stephen Buono provides a nuanced history of the unratified Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, more commonly known as the Moon Treaty. Sometime this decade, Americans—and by extension humankind entire—will return to the Moon. Four intrepid astronauts will descend to the lunar South Pole, where they will head out to explore a dark and craterous region replete, they hope, with stores of water and volatiles. On a series of moonwalks the astronauts will take pictures and video, retrieve samples, survey the local geology, and collect scores of other data to meet specific scientific goals. It will be the first time that humans set foot on the lunar surface in more than a half century, and the first-ever crewed mission to the South Pole. They will stay for roughly a week . In scanning popular newspapers, journals, and TV shows, it appears at first glance that neither the United States nor the wider world are legally prepared for this new wave of lunar exploration. Human activity on the Moon, we are told, will constitute a “Wild West” where anything goes. The great powers will scramble for rare earth metals. - Private companies will compete for hegemony in lunar tourism. - Perhaps even a neo-colonial race for lunar spheres of influence will ensue; years ago, one New Delhi-based magazine even speculated that the discovery of water on the Moon would precipitate “a repeat of the East India Company.” Sensational predictions about impending lunar chaos ignore several laws pertaining to the Moon that are already on the books . The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (OST) stipulates that states shall use the Moon and other celestial bodies “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” The accord bans the establishment of military bases on these bodies and forbids military exercises or the testing of any weapon. Grounded in that landmark document are the more recently negotiated Artemis Accords (2020), which reaffirm for its growing list of signatories that space exploration, for the United States and its partners, must adhere to a set of discrete principles aimed at the peaceful and sustainable use of space for all.5 There is, in fact, one international treaty that pertains specifically to celestial bodies, the Moon in particular: the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, k nown better and more colloquially as the Moon Treaty . Negotiated over a grueling eight years at the United Nations, the Moon Treaty was adopted by the General Assembly (UNGA) in December 1979. The monograph illuminates the treaty’s deep origins, the contributions of international space lawyers, the details of the negotiating process, the role played by the United States in shaping the final text, and the contributions of the treaty’s single most important author, Aldo Armando Cocca. Stephen Buono is a Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Province of All Mankind: How Outer Space Became American Foreign Policy, forthcoming from Cornell University Press. He has held fellowships with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, and NASA.