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The professor of air and space law at the University of Mississippi is open.
It has been 50 years since humans last went to the moon. The only natural satellite on the planet is about to get crowded.
More than 250 missions to the moon have been announced by six countries and a flurry of private companies. Plans for permanent lunar bases are included in many of the missions, as are ambitions to assess and use the moon's natural resources. In the short term, resources would be used to support lunar missions, but in the long term, the moon and its resources will be a critical gateway for missions to other planets.
Photos explain NASA's Artemis 1 moon mission.
There is a looming legal question. Territorial sovereignty is the basis for possession and ownership of natural resources. The Outer Space Treaty does not allow nations to claim territory in space. The limitations include the moon, planets and asteroids. Space resources will be managed.
I focus on the peaceful and sustainable use of space to benefit all humans. The 2020s will be remembered as the decade when humans transitioned into a space-faring species that uses space resources to live and thrive on Earth. The international community is trying to develop a framework for space resource management starting with the moon.
The first goal of the U.S. led Artemis program is to return humans to the moon by the year 2024. The plan is to establish a long-term base on the moon. Russia and China have announced plans for a joint International lunar research station. Several private missions are being developed by companies like iSpace and Astrobotic.
What resources are actually available on the moon, where they are located, and how difficult it will be to get them are some of the objectives of these missions. Water is the most valuable of these resources. Water can be found mostly in the form of ice in shadowed craters. When split into hydrogen and oxygen, it can be used to power rockets that can return to Earth or travel beyond the moon.
Other valuable resources on the moon include rare Earth metals like neodymium, which are used in magnets, and helium, which can be used to produce energy.
There are only a few areas of the moon that contain both water and rare Earth elements, according to current research. Many of the planned missions will likely head to the same areas of the moon as a result of this concentration of resources.
One of the most limiting aspects of the moon's surface is lunar dust, according to the last human on the moon. Regolith is a layer of fine dust and small rocks on the moon. When there is no atmosphere on the moon, regolith is easy to blow around.
The 1969 Apollo 12 mission was supposed to bring back pieces of the U.S. spaceship that landed on the moon. The Apollo 12 lunar module landed 535 feet away from Surveyor 3, but engineers discovered that the Apollo 12 exhaust blew regolith into the hardware
It's easy to imagine a lander or surface rover of one country passing too close to another country's craft and causing damage.
NASA issued a set of recommendations to all space-faring entities in 2011. Apollo and other U.S. objects on the lunar surface are historical and scientific treasures. The NASA definition of exclusion zones is as follows: Boundary areas into which visiting spacecraft should not enter. Unless they are contracted with NASA, these suggestions are not binding against any nation.
These zones are not in line with the intent of the Outer Space Treaty. According to the article, no area of space is subject to national appropriation. It's an occupation to create an exclusion zone around a landing or mining site.
The Outer Space Treaty has a possible solution.
The Outer Space Treaty requires that all activities in space be done with due regard to the interests of other people. Many nations are using space resources together.
The due regard provision of the Outer Space Treaty is used by 21 nations to support the development of "notification and coordination" zones. The major space-faring nations of China, Russia and India are not included in the accords at the moment.
The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space formed a working group on legal aspects of space resources. The exploration, exploitation and utilization of space resources should be developed and recommended by this group. Luxembourg, one of the countries not in the Artemis Accords, is interested in promoting safety zones.
The safety zones outlined in the Artemis Accords can be supported through this working group. Safety zones could be a starting point for the development of a functional system of resources and territory management in space. Important historical sites would be protected if such an action was taken. Resource management can be framed as a tool of preservation rather than exploitation.
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