Beyond Treaty Debates: Building Legal Certainty for Space Resource Operations

The conversation around space resource law has been dominated by treaty interpretation debates for over a decade. Meanwhile, capital is moving, missions are launching, and the legal infrastructure that investors and operators actually need remains incomplete. This session steps past the Article II debate and addresses the practical question: what does legal certainty look like for space resource activities, and what must be in place before serious investment follows?

This session examines the gap between existing national authorization regimes and the certainty threshold that commercial operators and their investors require. It covers what current frameworks deliver, where critical gaps remain, and what the next generation of legal and regulatory development must address to unlock capital currently waiting on the sidelines.

Attendees will leave with a commercially grounded view of where space resource law stands today, the legal and regulatory barriers ventures face when attempting to raise capital or secure contracts, and what has to change to enable actual operations.