Astronauts on the Artemis II mission are expected to splash down soon, marking a return to human deep-space travel and renewed interest in building a long-term Moon base. However, decisions about what happens next and who benefits are already taking shape.
While the 1967 Outer Space Treaty declares space 'the province of all mankind', newer frameworks like the Artemis Accords introduce concepts such as exclusive 'safety zones' around lunar activities, which could include mining of water or helium-3.
Space law expert Cassandra Steer views this as an example of the US 'trying to carve out a loophole', while legal scholar Michael Byers and space archaeologist Alice Gorman note that even well-intentioned mechanisms can become tools for asserting control in a domain that is meant to remain shared.
Our research charts competing visions for space across four different trajectories: countries treating space as a frontier to be claimed and exploited, a resource to fuel economic growth on Earth, an escape hatch, or a place to build new societies as Earth becomes less habitable.
However, Indigenous worldviews offer a fundamentally different way of imagining space: not as a frontier apart from Earth, but as part of a shared living system.
We argue for a shift towards an 'Earth-space sustainability' model, one that treats Earth and space as interconnected rather than separate domains.
