US government preparing to regulate business on the moon

Move is important development in work to determine who owns the moon and who can send objects there

A man and a woman look at the moon as they ride a Ferris wheel, while a total lunar eclipse begins in Tokyo

The US is getting ready to license companies for commercial development of the moon.

US companies are able to claim bits of the moon through the same process that allows them to get approval to launch rockets into space, according to a new report from Reuters.

The claims come from a letter sent by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to Bigelow Aerospace, an American space startup that among other things makes inflatable habitats for use in space. The letter seems to imply that if Bigelow put one of the habitats on the moon, it would have exclusive rights to that terroritory, according to Reuters.

Bigelow is sending its inflatable habitats to the International Space Station this year, ahead of a plan to keep them as outposts in space that could eventually see them house tourists. It then wants to move its focus to the moon, installing similar basis from around 2025.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is displayed during a media briefing where it was announced that the BEAM expandable space habitat technology will be tested on the International Space Station, in Las Vegas in this January 16, 2013 picture provided by NASA (Nasa)

Bigelow told Reuters that the new rules don’t mean that anyone can own the moon. They simply ensure that “somebody else isn’t licensed to land on top of you or land on top of where exploration and prospecting activities are going on”, it said.

The US is part of a UN treaty that rules over space law and bans any government from claiming the moon or any other celestial bodies. But it does not ban private companies from putting objects onto the moon, a process which is now licensed by the FAA.

And the US did not sign another key piece of UN legislation, known as the Moon Treaty. That was signed by just nine countries and limits the ways that countries and companies can claim minerals and other property that exists on the moon.