At 1:56 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a picture to Truth Social: a cratered lunar surface in the foreground, a crescent Earth behind it, an American flag, and four words across the frame — “The Moon Is Ours.”
That is the whole post. It carried no text of its own, no statement, no executive order and no proclamation. As of publication, none had been issued.
The distinction matters, because the post is being described in some quarters as the president declaring the Moon American territory. He did not do that, and under a treaty the United States helped write, he could not.
What the 1967 treaty says
The Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies — the Outer Space Treaty — was opened for signature on January 27, 1967 and entered into force that October. The United States is one of its three depositary governments, alongside the United Kingdom and Russia.
Article II is a single sentence: “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.”
Article I sets the frame around it: exploration and use of the Moon and other celestial bodies “shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries,” and shall be open to all states without discrimination.
Planting a flag, landing hardware, building a base and mining rock are all things the treaty contemplates. Owning the ground is the one thing it rules out.
What the United States is actually doing
An executive order Trump signed on December 18, 2025, titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” directs Americans back to the Moon by 2028 and “the establishment of initial elements of a permanent lunar outpost by 2030,” with a lunar surface reactor ready for launch by the same year. That is a programme about presence and infrastructure, not about title to territory.
The Canadian piece
Canada already has a person in this story. Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen flew around the Moon on Artemis II from April 1 to 10 this year with NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, aboard the Orion spacecraft Integrity — the first Canadian to travel into deep space.
Source: Donald J. Trump on Truth Social, September 6, 2026.
