Can you buy land on the Moon?
Short answer: no — and any company telling you otherwise is either confused or lying. Here is what the law actually says, what moon-land sellers are really selling, and how to tell an honest novelty from a scam.
Last updated August 2026 · Written by LunarAcre, which sells lunar novelty deeds and has an obvious interest here — so everything below is checkable against the treaty text itself.
The direct answer. Nobody can sell you legally recognised ownership of land on the Moon. Property title comes from a sovereign government, and under the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 no government may claim sovereignty over the Moon. With no sovereign, there is no title to grant, register or enforce. Every "lunar deed" on sale anywhere in the world is a novelty item.
Why not: the Outer Space Treaty
The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies — usually just called the Outer Space Treaty — has been ratified by more than 110 countries, including the United States, Russia and China.
Article II is the relevant part. It says outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.
That last clause matters. It closes the obvious loopholes: you cannot claim the Moon by planting a flag, by landing on it, by being first, or by any clever alternative route.
Why that stops private sales too
A common sales pitch argues the treaty binds nations, not individuals, so a private person may claim what a country cannot. The problem is practical rather than philosophical: property ownership is not a feeling, it is a relationship enforced by a legal system. A deed is worth something because a government will register it and a court will defend it. No government can register lunar title without asserting the sovereignty Article II forbids. So the claim has nobody to enforce it and nobody to enforce it against.
What about space mining laws?
These are frequently misrepresented. The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015, and similar laws in Luxembourg and the UAE, address ownership of resources extracted from celestial bodies — the ice you mine, not the ground you mine it from. They explicitly avoid asserting territorial claims. The Artemis Accords take the same line. Nothing in them creates lunar real estate.
So what are moon-land companies selling?
Novelty. The industry dates to 1980, when Dennis Hope filed a claim to the Moon with a San Francisco county office and began selling parcels through the Lunar Embassy; he says he has sold millions. The certificates are decorative. Several sellers have since copied the model.
That is not inherently dishonest — a novelty product openly sold as a novelty is a perfectly good gift, in the same family as naming a star. It becomes a problem when sellers imply legal title, official registries, or resale value.
How to tell an honest seller from a bad one
| Honest | Warning sign |
|---|---|
| States plainly that no legal property rights are conveyed | Says "legally binding", "registered", or "official deed" |
| Sells it as a gift or a curiosity | Frames it as an investment or says it will appreciate |
| Explains the Outer Space Treaty itself | Never mentions the treaty, or claims a loophole in it |
| Flat, small price | Pressure to buy larger "estates" or resell later |
| Protects historic sites | Sells you Tranquility Base |
What LunarAcre sells, exactly
We are one of these sellers, so here it is without dressing. LunarAcre divides the Moon into 5,762 hexagonal plots of about 1.6 million acres each, mapped onto real NASA imagery at real selenographic coordinates. For $14 to $49 you put a name on one.
You get: your name recorded against a specific plot, a deed certificate, a permanent public page for that plot, a 3D view where you can stand on your plot and look around, and the ability to build things on it by writing a few lines of code that every visitor then sees.
You do not get: any legal property interest, title, mineral right, or claim enforceable against anyone. It says so on the certificate. That is the whole product and we think it is a good one — but it is a toy, not an asset.
The Apollo 11, 15 and 17 landing sites and Chang'e 4's site are reserved permanently and cannot be bought at any price.
One genuinely real thing about your plot
The coordinates are not decorative. Because the Moon is tidally locked, Earth does not rise or set in the lunar sky — it hangs at a fixed point determined entirely by where you are. At 0°N 0°E it sits directly overhead. Ninety degrees away it rests on the horizon. And from the far side, Earth is never visible at all — the only place a human could stand and not see home. That is real astronomy, and it is why far side plots are the cheapest and the strangest.