There’s a new space race, will the billionaires win?

If there’s one thing we can count on in this world, it’s human arrogance, and space and astronomy are no exception.

The ancients believed that everything revolved around the Earth. In the sixteenth century, Copernicus and his peers overturned this view with the heliocentric model. Since then, telescopes and spacecraft have revealed just how insignificant we are. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way, each star similar to our sun, and many of which have planets orbiting them. In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope took the first deep-field image: This image showed us that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in our known universe, huge clusters of stars spread across space.

Let’s take the International Astronomical Union’s definition of space as everything in the universe except our planet and its atmosphere. Asking the question “Who owns the space?” It looks funny. Arrogance on a whole new level. The idea that we can claim the rest of the universe is beyond imagination. It’s like a bunch of atoms in my little toe become conscious and declare that they own my entire body.

A few years ago, I hypothesized that space exploration could be divided into three distinct eras. The first was confrontation. It was World War II that fueled our first forays into the abyss, as this proved to be an effective means of dropping munitions even further. The Space Race was born out of military competition – an attempt to prove superiority. The second era brought cooperation. The creation of the European Space Agency in 1975, and this symbolic docking of Soviet and American spacecraft, symbolized what humanity could collectively achieve. But we are now on the verge of a third era: marketing. Space exploration is no longer just the domain of states, but of billionaires, private companies and startups promising vacations in orbit.

Of course, the space industry has been commercial for decades – many communications satellites, Earth observation systems and some launch vehicles are privately funded and operated. But what has changed is that humans themselves are now part of the business plan, as we move from exploration to potential exploitation. Private space stations, space tourism, mining on the moon and asteroids – these are the new frontiers. So the question of ownership suddenly became legally, morally and economically important.

Legally, the foundation for space management has been laid long ago. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when rockets first penetrated Earth’s atmosphere, the United Nations drafted conventions to regulate extraterrestrial activities. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty set out some remarkably utopian principles: “The exploration and use of outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall be undertaken for the benefit and interests of all countries, regardless of their degree of economic or scientific development, and this shall be the prerogative of all mankind.” I’d like to rephrase it for humanity, but I like sentiment.

It is a beautiful vision, but it may be increasingly fragile. As technology advances, these noble principles will face economic reality. When a commercial company finds valuable mineral deposits on the moon or an asteroid, who stands to benefit?

I would argue that commercialization is necessary – space needs to pay for itself, because in the absence of profit humanity will remain “Earth-bound” for centuries. Exploration is expensive, and governments alone cannot foot the bill. If mining helium-3 or capturing asteroids helps fund missions that expand our knowledge and capabilities and improve our care of our planet, that can be a good thing. But commercial marketing must come with fairness and transparency. Otherwise we risk repeating the mistakes of our past, but on a truly cosmic scale.

The comparison I like to make often is with the East India Company: a private British corporation that became so powerful that it could shape the politics of nations, and at times had an army twice the size of the British Army. It started as a business. He ended up dominating. Could a similar dynamic unfold locally in our solar system, where a handful of technology giants and billionaires today control access to orbit, communications, and, ultimately, extraterrestrial resources? A monopoly on space would be dangerous to humanity. The challenge is to encourage innovation and investment without ceding ownership of the universe to a few individuals or organizations.

The moon is a fascinating case study. For scientists, it is a natural laboratory – a place to study planetary history and test new technologies. But it’s also an attractive business target. It has water ice at its poles, which can be split into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel. Its gravity is only one-sixth that of Earth, making it a sound launchpad for deeper space exploration. Some have suggested extracting helium-3 from the lunar surface, a potential fuel for future fusion reactors. The possibilities are tantalizing. But who decides how the Moon’s resources are used, and who does that matter?

The Outer Space Treaty prohibits the appropriation of national resources, but it does not explicitly prevent private companies from extracting resources. This ambiguity has prompted countries such as the United States and Luxembourg to pass their own space mining laws and grant the rights to their local companies. However, if each country set its own rules, could the result be chaos like the early Wild West – or even conflict? Space, by its nature, requires global organization.

That is why I believe we need to revive the spirit of the early treaties, not just in word but in action. We must view space as a shared domain, similar to the high seas, or perhaps more appropriately Antarctica. No one owns Antarctica. It is protected for peaceful research under an international agreement. This did not prevent some countries from taking an interest in their minerals, but the principle remains: collective management. Space justifies the same approach. How we behave in the Third Age of Space will determine not only the future of exploration, but the kind of species we are. Do we carry our ancient rivalries and greed to the stars, or do we finally learn to act as one planet, united by curiosity and care?

As always, I’m optimistic. I trust the new generation to do better, and space has a way of putting things right. When astronauts look at Earth from orbit, they describe a feeling of awe, known as the “overview effect.” They see our planet as it really is, fragile and shared. Perhaps if we can hold to this view, even as we venture further, we may be able to reach for the stars in a way that benefits everyone.

Dame Dr Maggie Adrien-Pocock will deliver the Royal Institution’s 2025 Christmas Lectures.