An international commission to protect space cultural heritage on the moon is needed now

How can heritage in space — the very objects and events that tell the story of humanity becoming a spacefaring civilization, such as Neil Armstrong’s and Buzz Aldrin’s bootprints, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander, and more recently Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 and Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost — best be protected?

The experience of Holocaust art recovery — which has dragged on for 80 years after the end of World War II and led to very few restitutions to Jewish families — presents a cautionary tale. To prevent the same mistakes from occurring and to preserve the cultural artifacts of our past and future journeys into space, a Space Cultural Heritage Commission should be created. This can be done by the signatories to a U.N. treaty like the New York Convention, as an independent commission or one through the Permanent Court of Arbitration, to effectuate the terms of the Outer Space Treaty.

A Commission could also be created by the thus-far 55 countries signing onto the Artemis Accords who, through that bilateral instrument, already recognize the need to protect space cultural heritage. If a Commission is not established under either the New York Convention or the Artemis Accords, at the very least, the Dubai International Financial Centre’s Courts of Space should step in to provide a forum for such disputes, particularly those involving commercial space actors.