Episode 18: Michelle Hanlon

Space Law Expert; Co-Director, Center for Air and Space Law, University of Mississippi School of Law; co-founder of For All Moonkind; President, National Space Society

 00:39:54


 

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Show Notes


Michelle Hanlon
 is a maven of all things involving space law. She is Co-Director of the Center for Air and Space Law at Ole Miss and an instructor of aviation and space law. She is also a co-founder and the President of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the only organization in the world focused on protecting human cultural heritage in outer space. Prior to space law, she conducted complex international transactions, including the restructuring of sovereign debt for a number of South and Latin American countries and evolved into the negotiation and implementation of cross-border technology mergers and acquisitions.  

Listen in as Michelle Hanlon describes what is so exciting about space law, the importance of maintaining space history and cultural property, and the impact of New Space on the legal landscape.

This episode is powered by Clearbrief, Trellis, BriefCatch, and CSBA.

 

Michelle Hanlon

Michelle is a Co-Founder and the President of For All Moonkind, Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the only organization in the world focused on protecting human cultural heritage in outer space. For All Moonkind has been recognized by the United Nations as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Michelle is the President of the National Space Society and is on the Advisory Board of several start-ups involved in commercial space activities including orbital debris removal, remote sensing and the support of lunar resource extraction.


 

Transcript

I am very happy to have as a guest, Michelle Hanlon, who wears many hats and is deeply involved in vanguard work in the area of Space Law, which itself is a developing area of specialty. Professor Hanlon is the Director of the Center for Air and Space Law, an Instructor in Aviation and Space Law at Ole Miss. She is also the Co-President and Founder of a nonprofit, For All Moonkind. She wears the hat of the President of the National Space Society

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Welcome, Professor Hanlon.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Obviously, I want to know first how you became interested in law. What drew you to become a lawyer and go to law school? Second of all, what drew you to Space Law? Did you start out in that area?

It is interesting because I’m the first lawyer on both sides of my extended family. It was one of those, “Be a doctor.” My parents were diplomats. For me, a lawyer was like LA Law. I went to college and anticipated that I would go into government service. When I graduated, I was able to work on the Hill as a staffer. Everybody on the Hill is a lawyer. Everyone told me, “Get a Law degree because it is incredible discipline and a great education. You don’t have to be a lawyer. It gives you the tools to be so many different things.”

I was young, had no idea what I wanted to do, and thought, “That would be good.” I was fortunate enough to be able to go. I was a paralegal first. I worked through law school and fell in love with the detail of it. I started as a contract lawyer and enjoyed the discipline of making sure the periods were in the right place, it was a comma, not a semi-colon, and is it an and or an or, and understanding the difference very little words can make to a contract or a case. I fell in love with the art of it. As hard as that year was, it was very challenging, it is one of those where you feel very proud of yourself for making it through.

During law school, it feels like a rewiring of your brain to some degree in how you think about problems, but I have noticed myself serving on boards for different nonprofits. As lawyers, the way we are trained to think is different in terms of its analytical value of it. The way we break down problems is very different, even when we are not practicing law.

It is interesting that you say it. It makes you change the way you think because in the first term of my one L year, I did terribly, and I thought, “I have made the biggest mistake.” I had Cs and Ds on those midterms across the board. The good news is there is hope out there. I graduated Magna Cum Laude, so I was able to overcome that, but it was very challenging. You have to embrace it and accept it. When you walk into a boardroom and bring that discipline into the room with you, it adds so much value to the discussion to be able to focus on what I find is focusing on what the issue is versus all the babble that goes on around and being able to hone in on, “This is the yes or no question we have to answer. Everything else is extraneous.”

That is what you don’t realize when you are always around other lawyers too. Over time you think, “Everyone breaks down problems like this,” but my experience when I’m in the room with a number of other decision-makers on a board is when I noticed that I’m like, “Not everybody is breaking it down in that same way.” Not that everybody sees things differently as what makes the boards work, but it does highlight what we get from legal training.

It goes the other way. I have transitioned. I was a corporate attorney for 25 years and have transitioned to academia. I joke because I got my Air and Space Law at McGill University when I was 50 years old. This is a late mid-career change. It was while I was at McGill that I learned we have these cultural artifacts, the Apollo lunar landing site, and the blueprint that is unprotected. I said, “I have been an M&A attorney for 25 years. I know how to close deals. Let’s go and get a convention to protect our heritage in outer space. How hard can that be?” 

It was 2017 and we had the ambition of having a convention in place inside by July 2019, the 50th anniversary of the Apollo lunar landing. That didn’t happen. I had a very quick lesson on how public international law works and the United Nations and so forth. It is a lot harder to hear nations than it is to hear bankers. We are still working on it, though.

It is a long process on the international level. It is a combination of not just advocacy in court decisions but also diplomacy. There is a lot of that. Your family background in that regard is helpful. It takes a long time to implement things, which can be frustrating. You enjoyed the art of law, legal thinking, and analysis. From law school, you went into corporate law and private practice, but how did you transition to focus on Space Law in particular and then decide to get that LLM?

I enjoyed being a corporate lawyer and did a lot of mergers acquisition work, banking deals, financings, and so forth. It was tedious. A lot of people don’t like it, but I enjoyed translating, having my client tell me what the document is saying, and being able to make the document say it. There is a lot of money moving around. After a while, it is fun but we need to change. I started out in a big law firm. I left and was consulting and working out of the house. I have two sons. It was perfect. When my older son was about 11 or 12 years old, he has always been massively into space.

As have I introduced him to Star Trek and Star Wars, he said, “Mom, I read this book by this guy named Virgiliu Pop about Who Owns the Moon?. I want to mine asteroids when I grow up.” I said, “That is great.” He said, “Apparently, there is some confusion about whether you can or not. You are a pretty good lawyer.” I said, “I like to think so.” He said, “Do you think you could get that figured out by the time I grow up?” I was like, “Okay, challenge accepted.” He went to the Naval Academy. He has four cubes that are in orbit.

He is now a submariner, which has bought me some time. He has re-sparked that interest. I was a Star Trek geek. I was a total space nerd. I feared Engineering and Math. I resigned myself to being that Poli-Sci, Humanities person. Once I got to the Hill, I didn’t regret a moment of it, but when I realized that there was an intersection to be had and this was going to become something valuable, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved. After my youngest went to college or empty nesting, I told my husband he would empty the nest by himself. I moved to Montreal to earn my LLM up there. At that time, McGill was the best in the world for air and space. Mississippi is now.

You have played an important role in that. There are not many places to study that or focus on that.

There are four that are focused on the space aspects of it. Those are McGill in Montreal, Leiden in the Netherlands, University of Nebraska, and the University of Mississippi. All of our programs are growing rapidly. One thing that is clear and a dear friend, Steven Freeland, who is a space lawyer from Sydney, Australia, has said, “Ten years from now, if you are a lawyer and you don’t understand Space Law, you will essentially be malpracticing your clients because that is how important and how immersed in space we will be at that point in terms of using satellites or harnessing other resources from space. It is going to be a huge part of our lives and the economy.” I’m starting the #TeachSpaceLawAsPartOfOneLYear Movement.

 

A law degree gives you the tools to be so many different things. You don't have to be a lawyer.

 

This is another example of you seeing where things were headed early and being tipped off to this by your son, but there is still some debate about how quickly some of these things can be accomplished. Certainly, there is no debate. We are at an important juncture in history when there is old space and new space co-existing together. New space will look very different from the old space, which is a few large governments that have the money to fund launching things into space and working together with particular discreet government contractors.

That still exists, but there are many smaller countries that are becoming involved and having their own space programs. There are also other companies most famously run by some very well-known billionaires in the world but there are also many that are engaged in this. It is not a government-only or a few government-only engagements.

The most exciting thing about Space Law is that it is constantly changing. It is also the most annoying. As a professor, I can’t use the same syllabus year-to-year because there is so much change happening, but that is what makes it exciting. I love getting my first two Ls when they haven’t had other classes. I say, “We are going to study Space Law. It is essentially this two-page treaty.” They looked at me and I said, “You are my goal. My job is not to teach you Space Law. It is to teach you what Space Law needs to be for us successful both on Earth and in space.” It boggles the mind, but that is why I love it.

You did ask how did I end up in academia. This is the opportunity to shape the way we want the law to look. There has not been an opportunity like this since the aviation industry started in the 1920s. Arguably, this is going to have a much bigger impact on humanity. Whenever we think about Christopher Columbus, when he arrived in North America, he pitched to Isabella and Ferdinand that, “I wanted to take this boat to North America.” Nobody alive at that point could have imagined where that would end up or we would get a whole new nation, jazzed, and civil rights movements. 

That was just one boat. Imagine what we can get out of space. Our minds can’t fathom all of the opportunities that are out there. To be able to sit on the sidelines, I have resigned myself to the fact that I probably won’t make it to the moon. I probably can’t afford to go even into lower orbit at this point and help guide how humans are going to relate to each other with and around and in space is an extremely exciting and fulfilling path.

It is a very exciting time and surprising how little there is to guide approaches or conduct. In part, because you are talking about whole new actors being involved in it, which is why I’m mentioning that before. You could have 1 or 2 treaties when you are talking about 3 or 4 countries and governments that are doing that. Now that you are going well beyond that, that is wholly insufficient in and of itself.

In order for a business to thrive, it needs to know what the guardrails and the guidelines are for that because uncertainty limits opportunities, especially in this realm. Being able to provide some level of guidance and clarity about what the expectations are under the law will have a major impact on what is possible in space.

We have an LLM program here primarily in Mississippi, but we do also offer JD concentration. We get a lot of young college graduates coming in and saying, “I’m going to do Space Law and work for Elon Musk or one of the billionaires.” It doesn’t work that way. What we see, though, is that you talked about all of these other startups. Masten Space Systems, Astro Scale, and all these companies are realizing now when you talk about the traditional path to the general counsel’s office, and you generally are talking about somebody working 4 or 5 years in a law firm, getting the skillset that a company needs. These companies realize they need more than just that skillset.

They need contracts, HR, and people who can work through regulations and administrative law. If you don’t understand the background of Space Law, you can’t advocate for that company very well at all. We are seeing now that these companies, ULA, they are looking for that JV concentration or somebody who, after five years, went and got their LLM so that they have that. Again, those laws don’t exist yet. These private companies have the opportunity. Our system is such that when the Federal rules are drafted, everybody gets to comment. You want those comments to work in your favor and need people who understand Space Law and Aviation Law, and we are going to do that.

Suggesting that it is important to have that background, even if we don’t know where it is going to go yet, that you need that background, foundation, the backbone of where we are in order to move forward from that and understand how we got to where we are. I’m very interested in space and the possibilities of new frontiers of the law as well. 

As an appellate lawyer, I enjoy that because what I enjoy most is making law. Here you are talking about making the whole entire area of law, which is tremendous. I have been in courses that have focused on the business of space, not necessarily the legal part, but the space business. There has been some discussion of the law in connection with those.

The discussion basically goes like this, “If you are a private company that would like to lodge a complaint or seek some damages from some wayward satellite or something like that, it creates issues.” What you do is you go to a country that is a signatory to the treaty and lobby them to put a complaint on your behalf into the treaty system. You will scratch your head and go, “That sounds challenging, first of all. What is the likelihood that would happen?”

 

The most exciting thing about space law is that it's constantly changing.

 

Second of all, it is not the most direct route certainly to which you could accomplish something. Third of all, I’m thinking, “What company, especially startups, are going to bother to do that?” Where is the certainty of how to handle disputes that there is not any? I thought, “This is further evidence that there is a huge gap that needs to be filled.”

On top of that, that is a great point I’m seeing. When you think about space tourism, space hotel, and slip and fall in a space hotel, every country is responsible for its own nationals. We are not talking about, if a Chinese person slips and falls in an Australian hotel, that is a Chinese-Australian diplomatic incident. It is not just, “Go to court and sue the hotel.” On top of all of that, the only standard we have for space activities is this concept called due regard. It doesn’t have a definition. It is a balancing act.

As you well know, when you have a balancing act, that is money for lawyers. That is money that should be going to be invested in exploration that is spent with lawyers, yelling at each other for decades about, “You have got the balance wrong and then I’m going to appeal it.” That is terrible and one of the things that we are trying to do both in Mississippi. For All Moonkind is basing this concept of parentage as a starting point, understanding what due regard means and how we are going to institute the flexible. We don’t want hard and fast rules at this point because we don’t even know what we can do. We want flexible rules that will evolve with technology.

We are way behind the technology. The fear for most commercial actors is that the minute we start thinking about regulating, it is going to be huge barriers to technology. My son had built satellites. I said, “We have to think about orbital debris and making our orbit a safe environment.” He said, “You know what an engineer here is when he hears safety? He or she hears more work, weight, five more weeks before we can launch.” We have to find a balance there.

It depends on what you want to foster too. In such a nascent industry, especially the new space, you don’t want to squelch things before they can even get something going. On the other hand, there are important questions with regard to For All Moonkind and the idea of, “There are some cultural artifacts that need to be considered, and history there that needs to be preserved.” It is an interesting thing that you were curious about that so early.

While I was at McGill in Montreal, Jan Wörner, who was then the Head of the European Space Agency, was in China. The European Space Agency has been working on this concept of a moon village, which is a brilliant concept. Let’s go to the moon together. He said, “China, you must join us in this moon village. We must go back to the moon if only to take down those American flags.” He immediately said, “I’m joking.” He is a wonderful man. I’m sure he was, but that is what sparked it in me. I said, “You can’t do that.” I realized, “You can. They are not protected.” There are arguments to be made.

A good lawyer would say, “Those are objects that belong to the United States, and the treaty says that.” They also talk about liability. Liability is there if you take down the American flag. It is not an operative submission binary. What loss is there? On top of that, you have the boot print itself. That is not an object that is sitting on the moon.

Imagine if that boot print was erased. I always think about Arthur C. Clark in this, but if you put Tanzania, there are boot prints that show what we think is the first time, or it is our first evidence of humans standing on two feet. Those are protected. They are buried under the dirt to protect them. They figured out that was the best way to do it. They are only uncovered every 4 or 5 years, but we didn’t discover them until the 1970s. There were people whose goal in life was to uncover. Imagine how tragic it would be if, three million years from now, it is somebody’s goal in life to uncover the first boot print on the moon. Why can’t we save it for them and save them the trouble?

There is always the question of any danger from rewriting or changing history. We are acknowledging that there are going to be a lot of changes and other opportunities in space beyond where we have come from. It is a nice marker for humanity about this is where we started and look where we are.

That is why we call our organization, For All Moonkind, because we see that first boot print that Apollo lunar landing site, Tranquility Base, as the cradle of our spacefaring to human civilization. We are Moonkind because we will all start from that boot print and expand into the universe.

I like the description of that. That is great. Artemis Accords came out. How do you feel about those in terms of protections for historical and cultural artifacts? Where are those going?

I love the Artemis Accords. They are an important step. I know that the biggest criticism of them is they don’t feel multilateral. They feel like the United States is trying to shoulder its way in, but it is not. Ninety percent of the Accords reaffirm what is in the Outer Space Treaty. What it does is the United States says, “We interpret Article II, which is a provision, which says, “No nation may claim territory in outer space by sovereignty or any other means.”

The United States signal to the world that it believes that means that you can extract resources. You can’t make a claim. It is important to start the debate. A lot of countries agree with the United States about that interpretation. People will say, “Russia and China don’t, but Russia and China have not said, ‘We disagree.’ They said, ‘We don’t like the Artemis Accords.’” They haven’t said why. 

To me, the Artemis Accords are a shot across the bow. This is what we believe. They are not treaties or contracts. They are a bunch of guidelines and principles. The most important and wonderful part of the Artemis Accords is Section 9, which is the first time a multilateral instrument has ever mentioned the fact that we have a cultural heritage in outer space. For All Moonkind, we are overjoyed with this provision. It doesn’t say much. It says that we recognize that there is a cultural heritage in outer space. We are going to work to protect it and figure out how to identify it.

 

Every astronomer starts from that boot print on the moon and expands into the universe.

 

As far as I know, For all Moonkind is the only organization that is taking steps to figure out how to identify and protect it. We are delighted to have that framework within these guidelines and principles. It is so important and it is the first time. People have been talking about this protection for a while. NASA issued guidelines in 2011 that are entirely voluntary. They only covered US sites. This concept is there. You needed people to force you to think about it because it is very hard to figure out how to do it, but this is why we have lawyers.

It is the first time that that has been recognized in an international instrument, but that is even basically something to be considered. That is a watershed moment and something certainly important for someone like you and your organization who is focused on that. It must have felt good and gratifying to see that.

We also had the One Small Step Act was signed into law in December 2020. The One Small Step Act says, “We drafted the One Small Step Act to say, “If you are a US company and going to get licensed by the United States, you will abide by the NASA guidelines and regulations.” We thought that was pretty obvious and benign. It got diluted a little bit. The way it passed was it says, “If you are doing business with NASA, you will agree to abide by the NASA guidelines and principles.” That is fine for now because there are not any private companies going to the moon without NASA. America is going home without NASA at this time. We applaud that legislation.

Senator Gary Peters was a huge mover in that. Senator Ted Cruz lent his support. It was so important to get through. We got it through in time, but we need to do more now because that is capturing the universe of players, as we see them now. The player is going to expand so much more before we even know it. We would like to see that concept broadened to encompass all US licensees and then ultimately have other countries follow that example.

There are some aspects of that. It is going to cover everyone right now because NASA is involved in all of the launches, but also, hopefully, there will be some industry standard created by that in a way that people say, “This is how it goes. People will start incorporating that into their own corporate culture or approaches. It will evolve in that way as the law evolves.”

You said something, and I never thought about it, but you planted the seed in my head of changing history. I’m not going to point any fingers. It is like, “Three million years from now, it might not be Neil Armstrong who put the first human boot print on the moon.” That would be tragic. I want to thank you because you have given me a whole new line of ways to argue our points.

There is something lost from that for everyone because that is an amazing achievement by people who were exceedingly brave at a time when technology was so not even near what we have now. It is amazing that it was accomplished. It is important to understand that and to have that.

To understand that humanity could achieve so much with so little [and provide a] model or memorial of ingenuity [is important and] would be right on time.

It is hope and inspiration for the next many generations down the line in terms of maybe there is something else they want to explore that is nascent. If they see that example, they will say, “We have done this before. We can do it again. They will be encouraged to carry on.” In my view, part of what is so exciting about space is that it is open in the law. It is a dynamic area because it is changing who the actors are and what is possible in that space. It is also uplifting in terms of what humanity can accomplish. Therefore, it is positive even if you are not involved in space. If you do live on planet Earth, it is inspiring.

As it should be, the Space Law community is still relatively small and it is incredibly welcoming. To have this camaraderie across borders, I’ve been presenting to the United Nations Committee on the peaceful uses of outer space to have that honor and privilege. We have been challenged by Russia, China, Mexico, and Greece. Not because it is a bad idea to protect the boot print, but because it is hard. How are we going to figure out how to do it? How do we get around Article II, which says you can’t claim territory? Aren’t you claiming territory if you are sealing off this area?

It is interesting to me that nobody has said, “That is stupid. Who cares?” Everybody has said, “We can’t worry about that because we have other things to worry about.” We say, “You do take care of orbital debris, sustainable development, and lunar governance. We will figure out how to do this and help you fill the gaps in the Outer Space Treaty to do that.”

What advice would you have for lawyers or even law students who might be interested in learning Space Law or getting involved in Space Law eventually?

First of all, I tell a lot of JD students who are interested, “You don’t have to focus on patents or technology. You would take public international laws and most important thing to know in order to be able to understand Space Law, but focus on what you love, because everything that we do on Earth, we are going to do in space.” We are going to need HR, contracts, IP, criminal law, and appellate lawyers. We are at this great place in space law where we need to start diversifying. We work too long in a bunch of international public lawyers in academics and need to start shaking it up.

Take whatever you would love as in your JD. If you are lucky enough to be at a school that has a Space Law course, take it. A lot of schools have Air and Space Law societies. Join the National Space Society. I have four young professional lawyers. I have a President’s Legal Advisory Council. If you join the National Space Society and you reach out to me directly, you can join that council. We meet once a month, whoever is available, and we talk Space Law. If you have time, you could be writing a policy paper for the NSS or contributing to an article that we get published in the space review. If you are genuinely interested and a lot of people don’t have time, this is a way to get your toe in the water.

 

Focus on what you love because everything that you do on earth, you're going to do in space.

 

If you have been out of school a little while, then get the LLM. The LLM at Ole Miss can be taken entirely online. It is fun. I offer a course in the summer called Astropolitica, which looks at the geopolitics of Space Law. It is a very flexible course. It can be taken asynchronously. It is a great way to be introduced. There are free panels and webinars that you can log in to and listen to podcasts. If you want to start contributing, we need young voices and Space Law. If you want to start contributing, I encourage you to join the National Space Society and reach out to me directly. We can get you involved right away.

I know that you are welcoming and open to people who ask questions about you because I’m one of them. You are good about getting people engaged, especially students and newer lawyers, engaged in the questions and having opportunities like that. It is definitely not a small thing to offer someone the opportunity to write or publish or speak because that is how we as lawyers make our reputations and start being known or associated with, “That person wrote something on this space topic,” and it will snowball.

I will say to young professionals and students, I challenge you because there is only so much our generation can do. The burden is going to be on the next generation to get those laws right. The more people I can get thinking about it now, that is why I’m so passionate about getting people involved. If you have the discipline and the passion for doing it as well, I will work with you because I am concerned about my children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren. I want them to see the Apollo Museum and the Chengdu Museum on the moon. I want to have a spacefaring civilization. It rests on the next generation to make sure we get it right.

Our generation is important, but it is going to be evolving so quickly and need to adjust. The next generation needs to be involved in navigating that for sure.

It is such a young area of the law that you can have a voice. It is a lot harder to break into other areas of law in terms of being able to be taken seriously for your thought pieces. There was a JD from Vanderbilt who was the first to write that orbit should be considered environment for purposes of the NEPA, the National Environmental Protection Act. That was a JD student. There are a lot of new ideas that the academics who came before me and even people in my generation are not thinking of.

We are not diverse enough. In Space Law, we are open to anything. We are working with a bunch of students on all sorts of fascinating ideas, and they are bringing ideas to the table that I would not have. The other thing is there is no stupid question because sometimes we will ask a question, and I’m like, “I never thought of it that way.”

It is at the stage of conceptualizing things, which is what’s so interesting. That is a wonderful invitation to people to become involved and feel comfortable reaching out to become involved. That is a great way to conclude short of the quick Rapid-fire questions that I always like to ask at the end. I’m going to ask you if you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?

It is the opposite of procrastination.

Who is your hero in real life?

There are so many to think about. I’m going to go with Condoleezza Rice. What she has done, how she built her career, made very difficult choices, and persevered has maintained her grace throughout. If I could be more like her, that would be my wish.

I was very lucky when I was at Stanford. She was there. I got to see her make some of those decisions. She is a gracious person. For what in life do you feel most grateful?

It is my family and my voice. No question.

Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?

That is hard because would it be somebody I would fan over or something that would be consequential? It is an interesting question. One thing I have learned in my 50s is that if there is somebody you want to meet, there is a way to meet that person. I have overcome this barrier of, “I can’t reach out to that person because they are too important.” When I think about who I cannot reach, I’m looking then for an influencer. I’m terrible.

I’m going to say Jeff Bezos because he has shown that he cares about Apollo’s heritage, plans to go to the moon, and has a ton of money. I can’t reach him but I believe that he would agree with For All Moonkind in our mission and help us. We are an entire volunteer organization. We need funding to help us bring us together, travel, and so forth. For $1 million, you could protect the blueprints and have a legacy. I can’t get to the people who have that money.

Maybe we can get this episode to him, and that is the way to reach. There is always some way. I will end with the last question, what is your motto if you have one?

It can be done no matter what you are facing. I have deadlines piling up all the time and it gets very overwhelming. You have to sit back and say, “It can be done.” It might not be done on their timetable or that timetable, but it can be done and it will be done, especially if it needs to be done.

That is a good way to close as I turn and look at the pile of things on my desk as well. Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Hanlon, and for your insights with regard to a very exciting arena of Space Law and opportunities there.

Thank you so much for having me. As you can see, I’m passionate about Space Law. I’m Michelle.Hanlon@NSS.work. For anybody who is reading, please feel free to reach out to me anytime. Thank you.

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