By: Michelle L.D. Hanlon
We are about to enter a new phase of human activity in space, one where private space stations are not just possible, but inevitable. NASA is already shifting toward a model that relies on commercially developed platforms to succeed the International Space Station, and multiple companies are racing to build them. Unlike the ISS, these stations will not be governed by a single, carefully negotiated intergovernmental framework. They will be privately owned, commercially operated, and internationally inhabited. And that combination is going to test the limits of how we think about law in space.
We tend to focus on the engineering. The modules, the docking systems, the life support. But space stations are not just machines. They are places. And the next generation of stations will be a fundamentally new kind of place, one that does not fit neatly into any existing legal category. They will not be sovereign territory. They will not be purely international spaces in the way the ISS has been. And they will not be disconnected from Earth’s legal systems. Instead, they will exist in a kind of in-between.
A better way to understand what is emerging is through the idea of heterotopia—a term used to describe real places that exist apart from everyday society, yet remain deeply connected to it. That is exactly what these commercial stations will be: physically separate from Earth, but operationally, economically and legally entangled with it. They will host individuals from multiple jurisdictions, operate under a patchwork of national laws and rely heavily on private contracts to structure relationships and behavior. Not quite here, not quite there, but unmistakably part of both.
The problem is that our legal frameworks were not built for this. The Outer Space Treaty still anchors everything we do in space, and it does important work. It tells us that States retain jurisdiction over their registered objects, that sovereignty cannot be claimed, and that activities must be conducted with due regard for others. But it was written for a world of State-led missions, not privately operated, multi-actor environments in orbit. It does not tell us how a commercial station should function day to day, how conflicts between individuals from different countries should be resolved, or how competing regulatory regimes will interact inside a single privately controlled structure.
So the answers will not arrive all at once, and they will not come neatly packaged in a new treaty. They will emerge through practice, through contracts, operational decisions and repeated interactions. Who gets access to a station, on what terms and under whose authority? How are disputes handled? What happens when national rules collide onboard? Each answer, however small, becomes part of a pattern. And over time, those patterns begin to look a lot like governance.
This is the part we tend to underestimate. Infrastructure does not just enable activity; it shapes behavior. And behavior, repeated often enough, becomes expectation. In space, expectation is often the first step toward law. Which means these commercial stations are not just platforms, they are precedents. They are quietly laying the groundwork for how humans will live and work together off Earth.
We are not just building the next generation of space stations. We are building the environments that will shape the next generation of space law. And the real question is not whether those rules will emerge.
It is whether we are paying attention while they do.
If you want to explore this idea more deeply, you can read my full article here: https://digital.sandiego.edu/ilj/vol21/iss1/5/