The Development of the Moon: Some Prospects for Regulation By Law

The last ten years have been filled with significant achievements in the development of science and technology in the area of world space research. Artificial satellites are now being launched regularly to study space at various distances from the earth. The dispatch of Soviet automatic stations to the moon and to Venus have become virtually ordinary phenomena. But it must be stated that both manned flights to the moon and the launching of automatic devices have not yet emerged from the stage of scientific experimentation. In order for permanent, everyday "space work" to be done in space and on the moon, research stations equipped with sets of scientific instruments and capable of housing teams of explorers and scientists from various disciplines have to be created. So complex a task cannot be resolved at the present time, but it is one of the most important problems facing world space science.