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It’s no secret that NASA and other space agencies will take us back to the Moon this decade (to stay, this time!) The key to this plan is developing the infrastructure needed to support a sustainable manned exploration and research program. The commercial space sector also hopes to create lunar tourism and lunar mines by extracting and selling some of the Moon’s vast resources on the open market.
Ah, but there is a hitch! According to an international team of scientists led by the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), there may not be enough resources on the Moon to go around. Without some clear international policies and agreements in place to determine who can claim what and where, the Moon could quickly become overcrowded, overloaded and deprived of its resources.
The team consisted of Martin Elvis, a CfA astronomer who led the study, as well as Alanna Krolikowski (Missouri University of Science and Technology) and Tony Milligan (King’s College London). The document describing their findings appeared recently in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A entitled “Concentrated Lunar Resources: Impending Implications for Government and Justice”.
As Dr. Elvis explained in a CfA press release, he and his colleagues were motivated by what they see as common assumptions regarding lunar exploration:
“Many people think of space as a place of peace and harmony between nations. The problem is that there is no law to regulate who can use the resources and there are a significant number of space and other agencies in the private sector aiming to land on the moon within the next five years. We went through all the maps of the Moon we could find and found that not many places had resources of interest, and those that did were very small. This creates a lot of room for conflict over certain resources. “
Currently, treaties for the governance of space activities are already in force. For example, there is the Outer Space Treaty which was signed in 1967 by the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom and has since been ratified by a total of 110 nations. In addition to banning the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons in space, this treaty prohibits nations from claiming sovereignty over celestial bodies.
Then there are the most recent Artemis agreements, which reaffirm the commitment of the participants to coordinate and inform each other about their activities on the Moon. However, neither the Outer Space Treaty nor the Artemis Accords prohibited private companies or individuals from declaring ownership of celestial objects, leaving the door open for things like asteroid prospecting and mining and lunar mining. .
At the moment, discussions have centered on scientific and commercial activities on the Moon and the rules of who can extract resources from where. Much of this stems from the fact that space agencies and commercial interests hope to raise resources locally – Resource Utilization In Situ (ISRU) – in order to meet their needs cost-effectively. As Elvis explained:
“You don’t want to bring mission support resources from Earth, you’d much rather get them from the Moon. Iron is important if you want to build something on the moon; it would be absurdly expensive to transport iron to the moon. You need water to survive; you need it to grow food – you don’t take your salad with you from Earth – and to split into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for fuel. “
Interest in lunar resources and concerns about appropriation date back to the early days of the Space Race. During the Apollo era, extensive research was conducted that explored the availability of resources such as water, iron and helium. More recently, research has focused on continuous access to solar energy, water ice deposits and possibly volatile compounds in permanently shaded areas on the Moon.
Interest in the moon as a place for resource extraction is not new. A large body of research dating back to the Apollo program has explored the availability of resources such as helium, water and iron, with more recent research focusing on continuous access to solar energy, cold traps and ice water deposits, and even volatiles that may exist. in shaded areas on the surface of the moon.
According to Milligan, senior researcher with the Cosmological Visionaries Project at King’s College London, the question of resources does not address the real problem. “The biggest problem is that everyone is pointing to the same sites and resources – states, private companies, everyone,” he said. “But they are limited sites and resources. We don’t have a second moon to move to. This is all we have to work with. ”
There is also a risk that these sites and their resources are more limited than is currently believed. For this reason, scientists are eager to return to the moon to get a clearer picture of the availability of resources before anyone starts looking for and mining anything. Elvis said:
“We need to go back and map resource hotspots with better resolution. Right now, we only have a few kilometers at most. If the resources are all contained in a smaller area, the problem will only get worse. If we can map the smaller spaces, this will inform the decision-making process, allow information sharing and help everyone play well together in order to avoid conflicts. “
Right now, the main challenge for policy makers will be to characterize the resources at stake at each individual site and it is clear that more research is needed to inform policy. But according to Krolikowski, assistant professor of science and technology policy at Missouri S&T), there is already a conceptual basis that (combined with old-fashioned business sense) could lead to a full legal regime.
For example, the Outer Space Treaty and Artemis Agreements stress that activities on the Moon must be consistent with international law. They also hold the signatories accountable for the activities of third parties in the areas where they have jurisdiction. Beyond that, countless legal issues need to be addressed, but efforts are underway to make sure this happens before any lunar settlement.
For example, you have organizations like the Space Court Foundation (SCF), a non-profit organization founded by law scholars and space experts dedicated to fostering a conversation about the evolving domain known as “space law.” As mentioned in a previous article, the Foundation is also creating an archive where relevant documentation and the most up-to-date version of the spatial laws can be found.
According to Krolikowski, another step that needs to be taken is to convene the parties who will actively search for identified resource sites within the next decade or so. Among the most important issues that need to be addressed is loss aversion, where strategies can be developed to prevent overcrowding, interference and other worst-case scenarios at individual sites.
Additionally, insights can be provided by examining research on comparable sites on Earth. Krolikowski said:
“Examples of analogues on Earth indicate mechanisms for dealing with these challenges. Common resources on Earth, resources over which no single act can claim jurisdiction or ownership, offer insights to gather. Some of these are global in scale, such as the high seas, while others are local such as fish stocks or lakes to which several small communities share access. ”
So far, multiple space agencies have announced plans to create a permanent human outpost on the Moon, including NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), the China National Space Administration (CNSA), Roscomos, and the Japanese Agency for l aerospace exploration (JAXA). There are also numerous plans to create bases that allow for lunar tourism and other commercial ventures.
For each of these plans, the sites must be explored well in advance to determine if they have the right balance of resources. These are not only necessary to build and maintain the necessary facilities, but ensure that they can meet the needs of their occupants in a sustainable way. But with limited sites and resources to work with, procedures will need to be in place to ensure that we don’t end up fighting over what’s there.
Just another challenge that must be addressed before humanity can plant its boots and flags on the moon again. But on the bright side, this shows how close we are to becoming an “interplanetary civilization”. The fact that we are at this stage where we have to consider how to resolve legal and territorial disputes on the Moon shows how close we are to getting back there to stay.
Regardless of how we choose to resolve the issue, the next two decades are sure to be an interesting time to be alive!
Further reading: CfA, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
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