The White House just released an executive order that in effect repudiates the Moon Agreement. I’ve been urging them to do this for months. This could be a prelude to start to pressure Canberra to withdraw from it.

It also encourages the development of multilateral agreements, which I’ve also been promoting.

[Update a while later]

Glenn Reynolds has the full press release.

One of the significant things about this, that many won’t realize, is that it effectively bypasses COPUOS.

[Update Tuesday morning]

Here‘s Jeff Foust’s story.

[Update Wednesday morning]

Here’s the story from Mike Wall. I don’t think this is right, though:

The new executive order makes things even more official, stressing that the United States does not view space as a “global commons” and sees a clear path to off-Earth mining, without the need for further international treaty-level agreements.

It specifically says that it is seeking bilateral and/or multilateral agreements. What it doesn’t think is necessary is doing this through the UN, or COPUOS.

[Bumped]

[Update a while later]

TASS: “Privatizing” space is “unacceptable.”

Putin’s trying to eat his cake and have it, too. He wants us to abide by the Moon Agreement without Russia actually acceding to it. This sort of nonsense is one of the reasons I’d been pushing for what the White House did.

[Update a while later]

Here’s some nonsense from the Grauniad.

[Saturday-morning update]

A piece from Popular Mechanics. This isn’t quite right, though: “…the ESA plan describes an interest in regolith, which is lunar soil rich in specific elements.”

Regolith per se is not soil; soil implies a biome, or at least fertilizer. also, it does not need to be rich in any particular element or elements to be regolith. Regolith is simply dust or rocks on a planetary surface. The entire lunar surface is covered with it, and nothing else, other than our few artifacts in a few locations.

[Bumped]