Short abstract

As lunar activity increases, safety zones are emerging as a practical means of preventing harmful interference. This paper asks when they remain lawful tools of coordination, and when they begin to function as exclusionary mechanisms around scarce and strategically valuable lunar sites.

Long abstract

Plans for sustained lunar activity are forcing an old legal vocabulary into a more concrete setting. Once several actors are operating on the lunar surface at the same time, “due regard” can no longer remain an abstract obligation. Safety zones have emerged as one way of translating it into practice. Presented in the Artemis Accords as a means of avoiding harmful interference, they offer a way to manage proximity around landing sites, infrastructure, and surface operations. Yet they also raise a harder question: when does coordination begin to resemble exclusion, especially where access is uneven and certain lunar sites carry exceptional scientific or strategic value?

This paper reads Articles I, II, IX, XI and XII of the OST alongside the Moon Agreement, NASA’s Lunar Landing and Operations Policy Analysis, the Hague Building Blocks, ATLAC discussions, and debates on cislunar security. It asks what makes a safety zone appear to be a legitimate measure of coordination rather than an early form of enclosure. My argument is that the problem lies in the design. A temporary zone, tied to a demonstrable hazard, notified, and open to consultation, is easier to defend under due regard. A zone that is vague or attached to scarce sites begins to test the line between protection and exclusion. Framed this way, such zones are part of a wider struggle over how the Moon will be shared, and over whether future lunar governance will be organised around coexistence and stewardship, or around priority for those who arrive first.