Draft Moon Village Association Principles: Creating Best Practices for Sustainable Lunar Activities

On March 6 2020, the Moon Village Association unveiled a set of 15 draft Moon Village Association (MVA) Principles intended to help facilitate the peaceful settlement of the Moon by establishing best practices for the long-term sustainability of lunar and cislunar activity. The MVA Principles are now published on the MVA website and are open for public comment. The announcement by the president of the MVA, Dr. Giuseppe Reibaldi, took place during a day-long symposium on Returning to the Moon: Legal Challenges as Humanity Begins to Settle the Solar System hosted by the Global Space Law Center at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (see “Hard law or soft law? The debate about the future of space law” , The Space Review, April 13, 2020).

The purpose of this article is to answer some basic questions about the nature of the MVA Principles and to provide a concise summary of the principles to acquaint readers with their scope.