Space resources have long occupied a gray zone in international space law. They are central to the future of exploration and sustained presence beyond Earth, yet they remain legally ambiguous in a regime originally designed for use and exploration with an emphasis on scientific inquiry. That ambiguity, a legacy of the mid-20th century, has long been scrutinized for its far-reaching implications into this century. It has become a site of geopolitical frictions, where national regulatory initiatives emphasizing or enabling commercialization collide with persistent concerns (especially among non-spacefaring states) about exclusion, functional and perpetual appropriation (or, as some call it, pseudo-sovereignty), and the reproduction of terrestrial extractivist tendencies on the Moon and other celestial bodies.
Last May, the Working Group on the Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities, a part of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space (UNCOPUOS), produced one publicly available draft of the Recommended Principles on Space Resource Activities (dated March 2025). Since then, three successive drafts (issued in July, October, and December 2025) have materially altered the legal and political trajectory of these rules. The point of revisiting the question now is to capture these recent developments and recognize that space resource governance is a moving target—that legal (and, inevitably, political) analysis must move with the text itself.
Soft law as normative engineering
Across 2025, the Draft Principles increasingly assert the fact that the eventual final text is intended as a non-binding guidance instrument. By October and December, the preamble repeatedly accommodates language clarifying that the principles do not create legal obligations and are not intended to affect existing rights and obligations under international law. This shows two important facts. Firstly, it is a manifestation of the long-acknowledged shift from treaties to soft law instruments in space law and policy-making, arguably triggered after the underwhelming participation in the Moon Agreement. Secondly, it reflects a shared anxiety within UNCOPUOS that soft law might otherwise be read as hard law in waiting, or as an interpretative shortcut around the Outer Space Treaty.
Naturally, this non-binding character does not render the text normatively inert. The Draft Principles add to the legal apparatus not by creating obligations per se, but by reframing what counts as legality in the first place and providing contextual clarity. Over the course of 2025, the Working Group progressively shifted the focus away from abstract entitlement (i.e., whether extraction is permissible in principle—a long-standing policy and academic discussion) toward a conditional legitimacy model grounded in conduct and compliance. If the current draft prevails, legitimacy of space resource activities would no longer be framed as flowing automatically from Article I’s freedom of use and exploration alone (as, for instance, the Artemis Accords imply), but as something that must be acquired through commitment to multilateral principles.
A rapprochement between extraction and non-appropriation?
The most consequential evolution in the 2025 drafts concerns the relationship between resource extraction and the prohibition of national appropriation. In the March and July drafts, the proposition that extraction does not inherently constitute national appropriation is kept at arm’s length from the core principles, appearing only among the ‘possible additional provisions’ under Part II. With regard to provisions grouped under Part II, a common denominator is that they are indeed divisive and arguably very consequential—a possible reason for their contested nature in the first place. Similarly, this Artemis-inspired addition under Part II, which also faced opposition during the Legal Subcommittee sessions in May 2025, had sat apart from the core text and reflected the absence of anything approaching consensus.
Interestingly, in the October text, this changed. The extraction sentence is moved into Principle 2 itself, within the main architecture of the instrument, even though it remains bracketed. This is a quiet but significant move, which likely originates from the intersessional meeting held in September 2025. While continued resistance to its inclusion is highly likely in the upcoming sessions, the Working Group seems to have internalized the extraction conundrum as an idea that can be negotiated within the core structure of the principles.
Some hints of this continued resistance and pushback can arguably be found in the December version, as it performs a further adjustment. The bracketed sentence remains, but it is explicitly conditioned: ‘[The extraction [and/or utilization] of space resources [in full compliance with these Principles] does not inherently constitute national appropriation.]’ (Principle 2, December 2025 text, all brackets in original). This double-bracketed qualifier would fundamentally change the nature of the claim, as it is no longer a broad interpretative reassurance which would have undoubtedly fully aligned with the preferences of the Artemis bloc. With this addition, it becomes a compliance-based proposition. Extraction is compatible with non-appropriation if and only if it is embedded in a governance framework that preserves free access, avoids harmful interference, respects due regard, aligns with sustainability expectations, and is subject to authorization and continuing supervision—whatever the final text of the Principles may include.
This shift matters because it transforms a binary legal debate into a governance problem. Beyond the discussion on whether the Principles themselves are binding, this addition, I argue, would carry significant interpretative weight vis-à-vis binding obligations under the Outer Space Treaty. It also reveals the Working Group’s attempt to broker a politically viable compromise between states seeking predictability for commercial activity and those concerned about appropriation by practice.
Artemis: a tale of alignment and resistance
This evolution inevitably invites comparison with the Artemis Accords and the broader governance ecosystem that has developed around them. Artemis language has helped normalize the idea that resource extraction can be compatible with the Outer Space Treaty, and it seeks to ‘operationalize‘ that idea through coordination tools such as safety zones. That operationalization has been geopolitically polarizing, because it does not wait for (and according to some, it outright avoids) multilateral consensus.
The UNCOPUOS drafts, in their current form, are more ambivalent. This is not surprising, as the Artemis text is a political text and reflects the approach of a political bloc. The UNCOPUOS processes are by definition multilateral and multipolar, which makes confrontations inevitable and consensus more challenging. On the one hand, the willingness to engage with the legality and legitimacy of resource extraction within the core principles (albeit conditionally) suggests a degree of convergence with the objective of ensuring legal and political clarity underpinning the Accords. On the other hand, the December draft sharpens resistance to the operational consequences of that objective. Safety and emergency measures are explicitly framed as something that shall ‘not [be] used as a basis for establishing ‘safety zones’ or any arrangements that could amount to de facto appropriation of outer space or its resources’ (Principle 4(C), December 2025 text). Even bracketed, this language functions as a strong political signal that, while coordination and mutual assistance in maintaining safety and security on celestial objects are acceptable, territorial exclusion on and perpetual occupation of celestial objects under the guise of safety and security is not. Either way, it is hard to imagine the Artemis bloc agreeing to this addition without a fight.
Therefore, rather than full alignment with Artemis, what emerges is what could be called ‘selective accommodation’. The Working Group appears willing to entertain the issue of extraction, but only if it can be decoupled from practices that qualify as perpetual occupation and conducted in line with compliance requirements. In this sense, the Draft Principles attempt to ensure that space resource activities will finally rise above their decades-old legal and political ambivalence on the one hand, and constrain and streamline their operationalization to ensure international space law is upheld on the other.
Space sustainability, scientific activities, and procedural reinforcements
Environmental governance provides a parallel illustration of the dynamic between addressing key issues and defining their limits. Environmental protection is broadly addressed under Article IX Outer Space Treaty, but its implications on space resources law are less obvious. The March draft’s sustainability provisions are outcome-oriented commitments, including contamination avoidance, debris mitigation, and even restoration of affected areas. By December, the principle is reframed as ‘Space Sustainability’ and explicitly channels existing voluntary frameworks such as the Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines and the Long-Term Sustainability Guidelines. The emphasis also shifts toward procedural mechanisms such as reporting standards, environmental impact assessments, and even cooperative or joint EIAs linked to consultation (Principle 5(B) and (C), December 2025 Text).
While the December text retains the original core of this Principle, it visibly reinforces the sustainability requirements by anchoring them to existing frameworks and to procedural processes such as reporting and impact assessment. This procedural shift also reflects the position expressed by multiple Working Group member states in their written submissions during the preparation of the initial draft (see, for example, statements by Germany, France, and China).
This procedural turn also reshapes the treatment of scientific activities. In an earlier post, I analyzed the tension surrounding the prioritization of scientific resource activities over non-scientific (and in particular commercial) activities, and questioned whether such prioritization could be grounded in existing international space law. Despite fervent opposition to it during the Legal Subcommittee meetings, the earlier drafts were relatively comfortable with the language of ‘priority’. By December, that language is softened toward ‘due regard’, while the principle expands to include benefit-sharing concepts such as dissemination of scientific results, technology transfer, capacity building, and even consideration of making a portion of obtained resources available for research (Principle 6, December 2025 Text).
The shift shows that rather than embedding a hierarchy of uses, the Draft Principles increasingly frame science as a global public good whose protection lies in access and dissemination rather than formal and categorical prioritization over non-scientific activities. The prioritization language remains under Part II, hinting that it might be too early to rule it out entirely. However, many non-spacefaring states are wary of actual hierarchies that privilege certain activities or actors, and despite persistent resistance by some member states (e.g. Russia), the prioritization language is unlikely to persist. What might ultimately emerge as a compromise are norms that link commercial freedom to obligations (or at least expectations) of shared benefit.
The limits of the quiet transformation
Despite these developments, the 2025 drafts do not yet reflect consensus in any strong sense. Mandatory prior notification, ex ante consultation requirements, institutional mechanisms, licensing regimes, and benefit-sharing modalities remain outside the core principles or heavily bracketed. This persistent containment signals both the limits of political agreement and the Working Group’s strategy for managing them. The Draft Principles are designed to shape conduct without forcing premature concessions on issues that would fracture consensus—a lesson learned from the Moon Agreement.
By the end of 2025, a tentative normative pathway has emerged. Extraction is no longer political or legal taboo, but neither is it granted unconditional pass. Its legitimacy is framed as conditional and constrained by an explicit cautionary tone towards pseudo-sovereign behavior. This represents an understated but real rewiring of the legal conversation. Legality is no longer argued solely in terms of abstract treaty interpretation, but increasingly in terms of whether conduct can be narrated as compatible with shared principles—assuming they eventually emerge.
Whether this pathway can mature into much-needed multilateral legitimacy remains an open question. If the Working Group is willing to host the extraction conundrum within its core drafting, it will eventually face pressure to move beyond bracketed menus toward clearer operational expectations. Safety coordination is one obvious test case. It is not enough to say what coordination must not become; the harder task is to articulate what coordination may actually and legitimately look like.
Finally, for now, the Working Group’s work in 2025 has resulted in a fragile but illustrative equilibrium. It may well be the beginning of a plausible multilateral compromise. But it is also clear that the conversation is far from over.
