He also proposed a global legal framework for mining on the Moon, called the Artemis Accords, encouraging citizens to exploit the Earth’s natural satellite and other celestial bodies for commercial purposes.
The directive classified outer space as a “physical and legal domain of human activity” rather than a “global common good,” paving the way for undermining the moon without any international treaty.
Led by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Artemis agreements were signed in October by Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy and the United Arab Emirates.
“Unfortunately, the Trump Administration aggravated a threat to national security and risked the economic opportunity it hoped to secure in outer space by not compromising Russia or China as potential partners,” says Elya Taichman, former legislative director. of then-Republican Michelle Lujan Grisham. Related: Will France abandon nuclear power?
“Instead, the Artemis agreements have pushed China and Russia toward greater cooperation in space out of fear and need,” he writes.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos was the first to speak, comparing politics with colonialism.
“There have already been examples in history when a country decided to start seizing territories of its interest; everyone remembers what came out of it,” Roscosmos Deputy Director-General for International Cooperation Sergey Saveliev said at the time.
China, which made history in 2019 by becoming the first country to land a probe at the end of the Moon, chose a different approach. Since the Artemis Accords were first announced, Beijing has approached Russia to jointly build a lunar research base.
President Xi Jinping has also said that China planted its flag on the moon, which happened in December 2020, more than 50 years after the US reached the lunar surface.
The next wild west?
Historically, China has been excluded from the international order of space led by the United States. It is not a partner in the International Space Station (ISS) program, and a U.S. legislative provision has limited NASA’s ability to cooperate in space since 2011.
“America and China should cooperate in space,” say policy experts Anne-Marie Slaughter and Emily Lawrence. “If the United States managed to coordinate with the Soviet Union on space policy during the Cold War, they can now find a way to cooperate with China,” they point out.
Slaughter, a former director of policy planning at the U.S. State Department from 2009 to 2011, believes President Joe Biden’s team should distance itself from Trump’s agreements and instead take a new course. within the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
“Biden can restore some of the U.S. global legitimacy by working to establish a multilateral framework, negotiated with all relevant parties that protects areas of common interest, while granting internationally accepted trade opportunities,” Slaughter and Lawrence wrote.
They say it will not be an easy task, but a necessary one. “Without an international framework that includes all the major countries traveling in space, the moon could become the next wild west.”
The race continues. It has been for a while. So much so that NASA has set out a $ 28 billion plan to launch an unmanned mission around the moon in 2021, followed by a manned overflight of the moon in 2023 and after a lunar landing in 2024. .
NASA plans to build a permanent base in lunar orbit called Gateway, similar to the ISS. From there, the agency hopes to build a base on the lunar surface, where it can exploit the resources needed to fly the first astronauts to Mars. Related: A ray of hope for the oil markets
Russia has in recent years been pursuing plans to return to the moon, potentially traveling more into outer space.
Roscosmos revealed in 2018 plans to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two decades, while President Vladimir Putin has promised to launch a mission to Mars “very soon.”
The United States, Russia and China are not the first or only countries to jump aboard the lunar mining train.
Luxembourg, one of the first countries to set its sights on the possibility of mining celestial bodies, created a Space Agency (LSA) in 2018 to boost the exploration and commercial use of near-Earth object resources.
Unlike NASA, LSA does not conduct research or launch. Its purpose is to accelerate collaborations between economic project leaders in the space sector, investors and other partners.
The small European nation announced in November plans to create a European Space Resource Innovation Center (ESRIC), tasked with laying the groundwork for the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources.
Luxembourg also supports a program to start extracting resources from the Moon in 2025.
The mission, led by the European Space Agency in collaboration with ArianeGroup, plans to extract waste-free nuclear energy that is believed to be worth billions of dollars.
Trillion dollar market
Both China and India have also raised ideas about extracting Helium-3 from the Earth’s natural satellite. Beijing has already landed on the moon twice in the 21st century, with more missions to follow.
In Canada, most initiatives have come from the private sector. One of the most recognized was the Northern Ontario-based Deltion Innovations association, with Moon Express, the first American private space exploration company to be granted government permission to travel beyond orbit. of the Earth.
Space companies under construction include plans to mine asteroids, track space debris, build the first human settlement on Mars, and billionaire Elon Musk’s own plan for an unmanned mission to the red planet.
Geologists, as well as emerging companies such as Planetary Resources, based in the United States, a pioneer in the space mining industry, believe that asteroids are full of iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those on Earth, which is a market valued in trillions.
On December 5, 2020, a metal asteroid 140 miles wide and with an estimated value of $ 10,000 trillion came closest to our planet.
“With NASA and other companies investing and developing nuclear energy for use in space travel and colonization, the reality of mining asteroids is closer than ever,” says Bob Goldstein, CEO of U.S. Nuclear Corp.
With successfully proven fusion energy experiences, U.S. nuclear and magnetoinertial fusion (MIFTI) technologies believe they are just a few years away from building the world’s first fusion energy generator.
Fusion energy releases up to four times more energy than fission and uses light, low-cost, safe and sustainable fuel.
A spacecraft with fusion-powered propulsion systems could reach the asteroid belt in as little as seven months. According to Goldstein, it could be powerful enough to transport the asteroid into Earth orbit where it would be much more efficient to exploit and transport these valuable resources to Earth.
By Mining.com
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