Governing the Moon – A History

NASA has issued a new volume, Governing the Moon – A History, part of a series of monographs in aerospace history and a report for NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy, closed down in March 2025.

This invaluable read is authored by Stephen Buono, a Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

The monograph is built around five chapters: The Moon’s Lawyer, Aldo Armando Cocca and the Germ of a Treaty; “A Rather Clumsy Attempt” – Moscow’s Moon Treaty; New York, Geneva, New York – The United Nations Negotiations; The Doldrums – Limping Toward the Finish Line, and “Armageddon for the Free Enterprise System” – The Moon Treaty in the American Scene.

Buono 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.

Nuanced and complicated

Known as the Moon Treaty, the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies was adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Nine candidate landing regions for NASA’s Artemis III mission The background image of the lunar South Pole terrain within the nine regions is a mosaic of LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) WAC (Wide Angle Camera) images.
Image credit: NASA

However, negotiated over a decade, the treaty was not ultimately ratified.

Buono explains that this report, “if it is as useful to NASA as I intended, has provided a history of the Moon Treaty more nuanced and complicated than its politization in the 1980s may have at first suggested.”

Furthermore, Buono states that he has sought to illuminate the deep origins of the treaty; the contributions of international space lawyers to its intellectual maturation; the details of the negotiating process; as well as the role played by the United States in shaping the final text.

“As NASA prepares to launch humans to the Moon once more,” Buono continues, “it is my humble wish that the narrative presented here proves meaningful to the administration’s continued work on space governance.”

This publication is available as a free download at:

http://www.nasa.gov/ebooks