When it comes to the moon, everyone wants the same things. Not in the sense of having shared goals, but all players targeting the same strategic bases – government agencies and the private sector alike. Because, whether you want to do science or make money, you need things like water and light.
Many countries and private companies have ambitious plans to explore or mine the moon. It may not be at some distant point, but soon – even in this decade. In our latest study published in the Royal Society of Transactions, this can trigger ground tension if we do not find ways to manage the situation immediately.
So far, most of the discussions about lunar exploration and mining have focused on tensions in space between government agencies and the private sector. But as we look at it, the pressing challenge arises from limited strategic resources.
Key sites for science are also important for infrastructure construction by state agencies or business users. Such sites include “peaks of eternal light” (there is access to energy due to the almost constant sunlight), and polar regions that are constantly shaded by water and ice. Each is rare, and the combination of the two – the narrow peak of eternal light on the ground snow and the edge of the groove – is a valuable target for different players. But they occur only in the polar regions rather than at the equator sites targeted by the Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s.
China recently successfully landed Chang 5 aimed at a relatively smooth landing site near the moon, but this is part of a larger, more structured plan to take China’s space agency to the lunar south pole by 2024.
In the wake of the failed Chandrayaan-2 lander crash in the same region in 2019, India has attempted a more direct polar route. Russia’s Roscosmos, which works with the European Space Agency, is also targeting the South Pole by 2023 for a landing in late 2021. , In the Bokoslavsky abyss, as a test mission. Next, Roscosmos will have the opportunity to water in 2022 in permanently shaded areas to the Aitken Basin in the same region. Many private companies have ambitious plans to mine the moon for resources.
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Strategic resources that are not in the polar regions are concentrated rather than evenly distributed. Thorium and uranium, which can be used as radioactive fuels, are found in 34 regions with a width of less than 80 regions. Iron from asteroid impacts can be found over a wide range of 30-300 km, but there are only 20 such areas.
Then the poster boy of lunar resources, cut into dozens of science fiction films: helium-3, for nuclear fusion. The powder of the lunar surface is sown by the sun on crushed rock, which is found over a wide area across the moon, but the highest concentrations are found in only about eight regions, all of which are relatively small (less than 50 km).
These materials target those who try to establish infrastructure on the moon and then Mars and commercial exploitation (mining) or science – for example, creating distant rows of the moon, away from the growing noise of human interactions.
How do we deal with the problem? The Space Agreement (1967) states that “the exploration and use of space is in the interest of all nations and in the interests of all nations, and that it is the province of all mankind.” States do not claim parts of the moon as property, but they can still use them. It is not clear where the controversies and extraction by private companies are.
Proposed heirs to treatment, such as the Moon Treaty (1979), appear to be more restricted, requiring formal laws and an ambitious international regulatory regime. The deal failed to gain support among key players, including the United States, Russia and China. The most recent steps, such as the Artemis Agreement – a set of guidelines surrounding the Artemis project to explore the moon – are thought to be closely linked to the US program.
At worst, the lack of this structure can lead to more tensions on earth. But it is also possible for each to create their own things and create an unnecessary copy of the infrastructure. This will increase costs for private companies, which will have reasons to try to reclaim opportunities for science and the legacy we leave to future generations.
Ways to move forward
Our best initial response is to take its note from sites unnoticed on earth. Small land resource ponds such as lakes or fish stocks on the border of many villages are often managed by locally developed approaches by key players involved.
These suggest that the first step to lunar-resource management is to create agreement among users. It should focus on the nature of the resources at risk, how their benefits should be distributed, and most importantly, the worst situations they seek to avoid. For example, the cast must determine whether to manage the peaks of eternal light as a collection of high-value real estate or the amount of energy production to be shared. It may be worth judging on a case-by-case basis.
Another challenge is to encourage compliance with designed governance arrangements. For that purpose, lunar users are advised to create shared installations such as landing and distribution facilities, which can act as preventive carrots from misbehaving actors. It is difficult to incorporate such area solutions after a country or organization has made irreversible investments in work designs. It is clear that now is the time to divide these approaches.
This article by Tony Milligan, a senior researcher in ethics with the Cosmological Visionaries project at King’s College, London, is republished from a dialogue under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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