Аннотация: This article analyses the current state of affairs on creating "legal certainty" for economic entities in exploring, mining, using, and appropriating space resources. This study uses a parallel analysis of various events (legal, political, and economic ones) in the regulation of the extraction of space resources, as well as relevant legal acts. The studied sources are relevant acts of international and national space law, "gray" literature, and Russian and foreign publications. The transformation of international ideas about the possibility of national and/or private appropriation of space resources is proposed to be considered not only based on an analysis of norms and doctrine but also by considering various countries' institutional changes and technological achievements. The theoretical question of ownership of extraterrestrial resources and territories, discussed since the early 1960s, has moved from the distant future to the present. The current international space law seems insufficiently unambiguous for private companies and therefore requires clarification. However, the pace of modernizing international law lags behind the needs of the development of the space economy and needs to meet the interests of space investors and entrepreneurs. It is concluded that the chain of events of 2014–2022 testifies to the concerted actions of a group of countries aimed at deliberately forming an international legal custom—the source of international space law. It is shown that the adoption of a universal decision shared by all states in the field of space resources is hampered by the existence of equally significant but competing legal principles. Today, economic challenges are decisive in developing international space law: legal certainty in the extraction of space resources is necessary to ensure the economic priority and competitiveness of technologically advanced states in space.