It also proposes a global legal framework for mining on the moon, called the Artemis Agreement, which encourages citizens to exploit the earth’s natural satellite and other celestial bodies for commercial purposes.
The directive classified outer space as a ‘legal and physically unique domain of human activities’ instead of a ‘general community’, which paved the way for the exploitation of the moon without any international treaty.
Under the auspices of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Artemis agreements were signed in October by Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy and the United Emirates.
“Unfortunately, the Trump administration has exacerbated a national security threat and risked the economic opportunity she hoped to secure in outer space by not involving Russia or China as potential partners,” said Elya Taichman, former legislative director for the then Republican Michelle Lujan Grisham. Related: Will France abandon nuclear power?
“Instead, the Artemis agreements drove China and Russia out of fear and necessity into greater cooperation in space,” he writes.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos said the first time and compared the policy to colonialism.
“There have been examples in history when one country decided to take territories in its interest – everyone remembers what came out of it,” said Sergey Saveliev, deputy chief director for international cooperation at the time.
China, which made history in 2019 by becoming the first country to land a probe across the Moon, has taken a different approach. Since the Artemis agreement was first announced, Beijing has approached Russia to jointly build a lunar research base.
President Xi Jinping also made sure 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?
China has historically been excluded from the US-led international order in space. It is not a partner in the International Space Station (ISS) program, and U.S. legislation has limited NASA’s ability to work together in space since 2011.
“America and China need to work together in space,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter and Emily Lawrence, policy experts. “If the US managed to coordinate space policy with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, they can now find a way to work with China,” they note.
Slaughter, a former director of policy planning in the US State Department from 2009 to 2011, believes that President Joe Biden’s team should abandon Trump’s agreements and instead follow a new course within the UN Committee on Peace use of outer space.
“Biden can restore some of America’s global legitimacy by establishing a multilateral framework, negotiating with all relevant parties that protect areas of common interest while providing internationally accepted commercial opportunities,” Slaughter and Lawrence wrote.
According to them, this is not an easy task. “Without an international framework that includes all major spatial countries, the moon could become the next Wild West.”
The race is underway. It’s been a while. So much so that NASA drew up a $ 28 billion plan to launch an unmanned mission around the moon in 2021, followed by a lunar crew in 2023, followed by a lunar landing in 2024.
NASA plans to build a permanent 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 necessary resources to fly the first astronauts to Mars. Related: A glimmer of hope for oil markets
Russia has in recent years pursued plans to return to the moon and possibly travel further into outer space.
Roscosmos revealed plans in 2018 to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two decades, while President Vladimir Putin promised to launch a mission to Mars “very soon”.
The US, Russia and China are not the first nor the only countries to have jumped on the moon train.
Luxembourg, one of the first countries to draw attention to the possibility of exploiting celestial bodies, created a Space Agency (LSA) in 2018 to promote the exploration and commercial exploitation of resources from Near Earth Objects.
Unlike NASA, LSA does not conduct research or launches. Its aim is to accelerate collaboration between space project economic leaders, investors and other partners.
The small European nation announced in November plans to set up a European Space Resource Innovation Center (ESRIC), which is responsible for laying the foundations for the exploitation of foreign resources.
Luxembourg also supports a program to extract resources from the Moon by 2025.
The mission, managed by the European Space Agency in collaboration with ArianeGroup, plans to exploit waste-free nuclear energy, which is estimated to be worth trillions of dollars.
Trillion dollar mark
Both China and India also pushed ideas about the extraction of Helium-3 from the earth’s natural satellite. Beijing has landed on the moon twice in the 21st century, with more missions to follow.
In Canada, most initiatives come from the private sector. One of the best known was Deltion Innovations Partnerships in Northern Ontario with Moon Express, the first U.S. private space exploration firm to receive government permission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit.
Space ventures in the works include plans to mine asteroids, locate 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 the American Planetary Resources, a pioneer in the space mining industry, believe that asteroids are chock-full of iron ore, nickel and precious metals in much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, forming a market. valued in the trillions.
On December 5, 2020, a 140-mile-wide metal steroid with an estimated value of $ 10,000 quadruple made its closest approach to our planet.
“With NASA and other companies investing and developing in nuclear power for use in space travel and colonization, the reality of mining steroids is closer than ever before,” said Bob Goldstein, CEO of US Nuclear Corp.
With proven successful fusion energy experiments, US Nuclear and Magneto-Inertial Fusion Technologies (MIFTI) believe they are only a few years away from building the world’s first fusion generator.
Fusion power releases up to four times as much energy as splitting and uses fuel that is lightweight, inexpensive, safe and sustainable.
A spacecraft with propulsion systems powered by fusion can reach the asteroid belt in just seven months. According to Goldstein, it could be powerful enough to transport the asteroid to an 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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