Who owns the asteroid/meteoroid?
<p>This is a question I’ve been thinking about but I have no law experience so I wanted to ask it here.</p>
<p>Suppose an high valued (suppose billions of dollars) asteroid/meteorite falls and lands on the earth.  The question is:  who gets to claim ownership of it?</p>
<p>Scenario 1:  It lands in John Smiths yard.  Is it now John Smiths?  Or does it belong to the government that John Smith belongs to?</p>
<p>Scenario 2:  It lands in international waters.  Is it a free for all?</p>
<p>Scenario 3:  It lands on one of the poles.  Same as 2?</p>

<h2>National territory</h2>
<p>It depends on the nation. Some countries or jurisdictions have specific laws about meteorites, like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Australia" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Western Australia</a> <a href="https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/prod/filestore.nsf/FileURL/mrdoc_1471.pdf/$FILE/Museum%20Act%201969%20-%20%5B02-a0-11%5D.pdf?OpenElement" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Museum Act 1969, ss. 43-45</a>, which provides that meteorites are Crown property (there are many meteorites in the Nullarbor Plain). Absent any specific rule like this, meteorites are likely to be treated in any of the following ways -</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>It's a rock.</strong> Mineral rights (which often go along with ownership of the land in general, but can be separately assigned) may apply to meteorites on the grounds (haha) that they are rocks which can be treated as part of the land on which they fell. There may be special law vesting certain kinds of mineral finds in the State, should you be dealing with a meteorite made of gold, for example. Mineral law is a specialist topic even within national law, so the exact answer here may depend on a lot of factors - what the thing is made of, whether it's above ground or not, etc. - but the probable starting point is that rocks from space are no different in law from the rocks that were already there.</li>
<li><strong>It's an object that has no clear owner.</strong> There are longstanding principles for &quot;unowned things&quot; in civil and common law systems, typically applying to wild animals or other things that are naturally occurring and not part of the <em>land</em> as such. If a meteorite is &quot;res nullius&quot; in this sense, then it might belong to the finder or to the landowner, depending on exactly which flavor of legal tradition is followed.</li>
<li><strong>It's a valuable find.</strong> There are similar rules about &quot;treasure trove&quot;, for example in the United Kingdom which gives rights to the Crown. But a meteorite would not be classed as treasure in the UK, because it is an &quot;<a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/24/section/1" rel="nofollow noreferrer">unworked natural object</a>&quot;. Other jurisdictions might draw these boundaries differently.</li>
<li><strong>It's an object of scientific importance.</strong> A meteorite might be classed as &quot;cultural property&quot; within the meaning of the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13039&amp;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&amp;URL_SECTION=201.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">U.N. Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970
</a>, as transposed into local law. The Convention covers &quot;rare collections and specimens of [...] minerals&quot;, and objects of paleontological or archaeological interest. This could affect somebody's ability to export or destroy the object (for the latter, see also the <a href="http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17718&amp;URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&amp;URL_SECTION=201.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">2003 UNESCO Declaration</a> which includes &quot;cultural heritage linked to a natural site&quot;). National law might contain its own similar provisions.</li>
</ol>
<h2>International waters and the poles</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, Part XI</a> governs mineral exploitation in &quot;the Area&quot;, meaning the part of the seabed that does not belong to any nation. Activities of this kind are meant to be under the auspices of the <a href="https://www.isa.org.jm/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">International Seabed Authority</a>, which has copious rules about application and approval, navigation, environmental controls, and so on - subject to the Convention principle of treating the seabed as &quot;the common heritage of mankind&quot;. This Area includes the North Pole.</p>
<p>The South Pole is part of the area covered by the <a href="https://documents.ats.aq/recatt/Att006_e.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Environmental Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty, 1991</a>, which provides in its Article 7 that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In practice, as in international law generally, States might do all sorts of other things. But this is the broad legal position. It might be that States would agree a special regime applicable to the totally unprecedented circumstances, or that it would be a free-for-all.</p>
<p>Again, I'm assuming that the applicable principles for digging up a space rock for commercial purposes are the same as for other kinds of rock. There is international law about space rocks <em>when they are in space</em>, and about human-made objects <em>when they crash down to Earth</em>, but seemingly no special provision for meteorites.</p>

ownership