On the afternoon of Sunday, September 6, 2026, the President of the United States published to Truth Social a photograph of the Moon overlaid with the words “The Moon is Ours,” accompanied by an American flag.[^1] No explanation was offered. The post appeared within a longer run of images shared that same evening, most of them apparently generated by artificial intelligence, which included proposed black uniforms for the United States Space Force, a map of New Mexico with the word “Mexico” struck through and replaced by “America,” and a portrait of the President with the physique of the professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.[^2]
The objection that most commentators reached for was the Outer Space Treaty, formally the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. It was opened for signature in Washington, London and Moscow in January 1967 and entered into force that October, and the United States is one of its three depositary governments, meaning that Washington physically holds the instruments of ratification that other nations deposit when they join.[^3] Article II provides that outer space, including the Moon, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, and it forecloses in the same sentence the argument that use or occupation might accomplish what a claim cannot.[^4]
There is, however, a nearer document, and it is domestic.
In 2015 Congress passed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, enacted as Public Law 114-90.[^5] Title IV of that statute, cited within the Act as the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015, was written to give American companies the strongest legal footing any government has extended to the mining of the Moon and asteroids. It directs the President to facilitate commercial recovery of space resources and to discourage government barriers to the industry, and it provides that a United States citizen who recovers a space resource is entitled to possess, own, transport, use and sell it.[^6]
Title IV then closes with Section 403, whose heading, printed in the enrolled bill signed into law, reads: Disclaimer of Extraterritorial Sovereignty. The section states the sense of Congress that by enacting the statute the United States does not thereby assert sovereignty, or sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or “the ownership of, any celestial body.”[^7]
The disclaimer was not a concession negotiated with treaty partners or an amendment forced on the bill from outside. It sits three sections after the short title of the same title that grants the mining rights, written by the same Congress in the same Act, and it has stood since 2015 as the operative statement of American law on whether the United States owns anything in the sky.
End Notes
[^1]: Newsweek, “Trump touts renaming New Mexico, claims ‘moon is ours,’” September 2026. https://www.newsweek.com/trump-rename-new-mexico-claims-moon-is-ours-12410814
[^2]: Newsweek, ibid.; LatestLY, “Donald Trump Claims US Owns Moon in New Truth Social Post, Floats ‘New America’ Name for New Mexico,” September 7, 2026. https://www.latestly.com/us/donald-trump-claims-us-owns-moon-in-new-truth-social-post-floats-new-america-name-for-new-mexico-7593101.html
[^3]: United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, introduction to the Outer Space Treaty. https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html
[^4]: United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, text of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, Article II. https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/outerspacetreaty.html
[^5]: U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, Public Law 114-90, statutory compilation. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-15975/pdf/COMPS-15975.pdf
[^6]: H.R. 2262, 114th Congress, enrolled text, Title IV, Sections 401 and 402, adding 51 U.S.C. sections 51302 and 51303. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/US-Commercial-Space-Launch-Competitiveness-Act-2015.pdf
[^7]: H.R. 2262, 114th Congress, enrolled text, Section 403. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ast/media/US-Commercial-Space-Launch-Competitiveness-Act-2015.pdf