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Who owns the moon? A space lawyer answers
Most likely, this is the best-known picture of a flag ever taken: Buzz Aldrin standing next to the first U.S. flag planted on the Moon.
- Frans von der Dunk
- The Conversation
For those who knew their world history, it also rang some alarm bells.
Only less than a century ago, back on Earth, planting a national flag in another part of the world still amounted to claiming that territory for the fatherland.
Did the Stars and Stripes on the moon signify the establishment of an American colony?
When people hear for the first time that I am a lawyer practicing and teaching something called “space law,” the question they ask most frequently, often with a…