The basic concept of Artemis Moon is officially questionable

As NASA plans to launch four astronauts on Wednesday aboard its Artemis II mission, the race to return to the Moon is on. The current mission will see astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Moon before returning to Earth in 10 days. They will be testing equipment and systems that could soon see Americans stand on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years with the Artemis IV mission scheduled for 2028. NASA is not ready to land humans on the Moon yet, but that is the goal for the next five years: not only to put people on the Moon but to establish a long-term human presence on it.

It’s NASA’s selling point for Artemis, compared to the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s – we won’t be visiting the Moon for just a few days, but we’ll be on it for a long time. Exactly how long remains unclear, but the idea is to build a Moon base that allows astronauts to live on the lunar surface for weeks or months at a time.

That makes it even more difficult, since the astrologers will not be able to bring all the tools and equipment they will need with them. Instead, they will need to use the limited resources available on the moon, in a process called in-situ resource utilization. Instead of hauling a lot of water for a ride from Earth, for example, we’ll go find ice on the Moon and melt that to use. Simple, right?

Of course not. That’s science. And that is the law.

The Moon’s environment is harsh and inhospitable, with harmful space radiation, dusty material called regolith that is as sharp as glass and destroys equipment, and varying degrees of gravity to contend with. Although it’s more of a nightmare than the Mars colonization plans promised by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, NASA’s goal of establishing a base on the Moon by 2030 is still very optimistic. Throughout its messages to Artemis, NASA emphasized the importance of identifying and extracting the Moon’s resources, including water for fuel, helium-3 for energy, and rare earth elements such as scandium used in electronics. It is difficult to know how much these resources are until they are mapped and analyzed, but there is at least some potential value, as they are needed to maintain habitation on the Moon. And that’s the main reason for Artemis: Resources are needed to support the Moon base, so we need to build the Moon base to search for them.

The agency even describes the effort as a “monthly gold rush.” But this points to a problem with Artemis that cannot be solved by developing new technology: Some experts say that removing equipment from the Moon is a violation of international law.

There isn’t a great deal of international law that applies to space exploration, but what there is is very clear on one issue: No one owns the Moon. The Outer Space Treaty (which was signed almost 60 years ago but is still the mainstay of international space law today, if you can believe it) is very clear about the principle of non-allegation, which means that nations cannot claim sovereignty over any group in space. But what about downloading apps? There, we enter sticky territory.

Cassandra Steer, an expert in space law and founder of the Australasian Space Agency, says: “The US considers that the extraction of resources is not a use.” Many international lawyers, including Steer, have argued that this is illegal. “That’s a misinterpretation of the Outer Space Treaty. You’re trying to poke a hole.” Besides, if the community starts mining resources from that unprotested part of the world these days, it could cause several legal problems.

The US has been strategic about this issue, using an agreement called the Artemis Accords. This is not an international treaty, but an agreement signed by more than 60 countries to adopt high-level regulations on space exploration and the Moon in particular. Most of these principles are sound, reasonable methods of space exploration, dealing with topics such as sharing scientific data, considering security and emergency procedures, and adhering to the peaceful use of space.

But this document also includes sections that specifically allow the extraction and use of space resources, saying that this does not contradict the principle of non-allocation, and allowing certain countries to create “safe zones” around the areas of lunar activity where other nations will not interfere with them.

It is not true that anyone who reaches the Moon first says that a part of it is theirs, but it clearly means that anyone who starts activities such as research or mining in a certain area of ​​the moon now has access to resources in that area and other countries cannot stop them. It doesn’t have a piece of the Moon, but it gets a chance to get there before it by drilling, scraping, and landing in the right place for its potential value.

It is hard not to draw parallels between this process and the history of land conquest in the American West in the 19th century, especially in terms of access to basic resources such as water. Rebecca Boyle, a journalist and author of a book on the subject, says: “I think the Artemis Agreements could open the door to these kinds of applications for the Moon.” Our Moon. “Treaties say that safety zones should be relevant to existing jobs, but again, I think a creative lawyer or a strong legal argument could lead to a situation where the first mover uses the safety zone rule to claim anything that exists.”

A wise move by the United States was to integrate agreements into the Artemis program, so countries that wanted to be involved in Artemis had to sign the document. With a few key players such as Canada, Japan, Australia, the UAE, and the UK, many other countries, including France, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, and Germany followed suit.

“Therefore, it was the power of the US to say, if you want to join our program, you must agree to our interpretation of international law. legal opinion in international law,” explains Steer.” The strength of this multilateral agreement is that, if resource extraction is tolerated in practice, the original intent of the treaty may be defeated by a widely accepted definition.

Steer summed up NASA’s approach bluntly: “You’re trying to rewrite this treaty, and somehow you’ve convinced 60 countries to do it with you.”

The real elephant in the room in this legal debate is China, which has not signed the Artemis Accords and is on track to put its own astronauts on the Moon perhaps even before the US can. China and the US have almost non-existent relations when it comes to space activities, but China has been building its own international cooperation for its lunar program, including signing an agreement with Russia and carrying loads from various European countries and Saudi Arabia to its lunar missions. China has plans to build its own lunar base with Russia called the International Lunar Research Station, and the US is pushing hard on its lunar program to try to beat its rivals.

“The billion dollar question is why do you go to the Moon? And that’s in my opinion, just a political one,” Steer says. That is what drove the US during the last space race, when the Cold War was still going strong, and the Soviet Union’s race to the moon was not only a matter of political power but also an attempt to show who has the highest political views. Now, in the era of America First Trumpism, the US is trying to prove its power and ability again, but the nationalism language fails to capture the reality of exploring the area, which is now dependent on international relations and cooperation and borders.

Today, not only reputation is at stake but also access to space resources, from managing cislunar orbits and lunar orbits to managing resources needed for continued exploration of the Moon, such as ice or helium-3. NASA, after all, has been a circle because of its reasons for Artemis: We need to send astronauts to the Moon to ensure access to the ice, because we need to find water to support human research. There are good scientific reasons for a Moon mission, from studying the formation of the Solar System to using the Moon as a base to build a powerful telescope, but these have not been well explained or strongly recommended by NASA.

“The real, hidden agenda is who will have political power,” says Steer. “Space is another place where politics comes into play. It’s no different than the AI ​​race, it’s no different than the competition around other resources, around oil, around water…