An executive directive by the White House April 6 seeks to get international support for the U.S. position that space resources can be utilized by companies and organizations and to head off alternative worldwide legal regimes.

The government order calls on the State Department to lead interagency efforts to encourage other nations to undertake the American position supporting “safe and sustainable operations for the public and private recovery and use of space resources.”

That might follow federal law, in the type of the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, which grants American firms rights to space resources they extract.

The order explicitly opposes the Moon Agreement, often known as the Moon Treaty, that treats the moon and other celestial bodies as the “frequent heritage of mankind” and would set up a global regime to govern the usage of such resources.

The U.S. and most different major spacefaring nations rejected the final version of the Moon Settlement in the late Seventies, and so far, the agreement has been ratified by 18 nations.

Planning for the executive order began in 2019, the official stated; however, it was ultimately linked to the release by NASA April 2 of a report outlining its long-term programs for sustainable lunar exploration.