It also proposed a global legal framework for mining on the moon, called the Artemis Accords, and encouraged citizens to mine Earth’s natural satellite and other celestial objects for commercial purposes.
The directive classified space as a “legally and physically unique domain of human activity” rather than a “global commons,” paving the way for the moon’s mining without any international treaty.
Led by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Artemis Accords were signed in October by Australia, Canada, England, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy and the United Emirates.
“Unfortunately, the Trump administration exacerbated a threat to national security and risked the economic opportunity it hoped to secure in space by not involving Russia or China as potential partners,” said Elya Taichman, former legislative director of the then Republican Michelle Lujan Grisham. Related: Will France Leave Nuclear?
Instead, the Artemis Accords have driven China and Russia out of fear and necessity for more cooperation in space, he writes.
The Russian space agency Roscosmos was the first to speak out, comparing policy to colonialism.
“There are already examples in history where a country decided to conquer territories for its sake – everyone remembers what came of it,” said Sergey Saveliev, Roscosmos deputy general manager for international cooperation, at the time.
China, which made history in 2019 by being the first country to land a probe on the other side of the moon, took 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 caused China to plant 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 a US legal provision has limited NASA’s ability to partner with it in space since 2011.
“America and China must work together in space,” say policy experts Anne-Marie Slaughter and Emily Lawrence. “If the US has managed to coordinate with the Soviet Union on space policy during the Cold War, it can now find a way to work with China,” they note.
Slaughter, a former director of policy planning at the United States Department of State from 2009 to 2011, believes President Joe Biden’s team should move away from Trump’s accords and instead take a new course within the UN Committee for the peaceful use of space.
“Biden can restore some of America’s global legitimacy by working towards a multilateral framework negotiated with all relevant parties that protects areas of common interest while providing internationally accepted commercial opportunities,” wrote Slaughter and Lawrence.
It will not be an easy task, they say, but a necessary one. “Without an international framework encompassing all major spaceflight nations, the moon could become the next Wild West.”
The race is on. It’s been a while. So much so that NASA has drawn up a $ 28 billion plan to launch an unmanned mission around the moon in 2021, followed by a manned lunar flight in 2023 and then a moon landing in 2024.
NASA plans to build a permanent base in orbit around the moon called the Gateway, similar to the ISS. From there, the agency hopes to build a base on the lunar surface where it can mine the resources needed to fly the first astronauts to Mars. Related: A ray of hope for oil markets
Russia has made plans in recent years to return to the moon and possibly travel further into space.
Roscosmos in 2018 unveiled plans to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two decades, while President Vladimir Putin has vowed to launch a mission to Mars “very soon”.
The US, Russia, and China are neither the first nor the only countries to jump on the mining train.
Luxembourg, one of the first countries to turn its attention to the possibility of mining celestial objects, established a Space Agency (LSA) in 2018 to stimulate the exploration and commercial use of Near Earth Objects resources.
Unlike NASA, LSA does not research or launch. The aim is to accelerate collaboration between economic project leaders from the space sector, investors and other partners.
The small European country announced plans in November to establish a European Space Resources Innovation Center (ESRIC), which will lay the foundation for the exploitation of alien resources.
Luxembourg also supports a program to start extracting resources from the moon by 2025.
The mission, which heads the European Space Agency in partnership with ArianeGroup, plans to extract waste-free nuclear power that is believed to be worth trillions of dollars.
Trillion dollar market
Both China and India have also put forward ideas on how to extract Helium-3 from Earth’s natural satellite. Beijing has already landed on the moon twice in the 21st century, and more missions are to follow.
In Canada, most initiatives come from the private sector. One of the most touted was the Northern Ontario-based Deltion Innovations partnership with Moon Express, the first US private space exploration company to receive government permission to travel beyond Earth’s orbit.
Space projects in the works 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 US-based Planetary Resources, a space mining pioneer company, believe that asteroids are full of iron ore, nickel and precious metals in concentrations much higher than those on Earth, making them a market. . valued in the trillions.
On December 5, 2020, a metal asteroid with a width of 240 miles and an estimated value of $ 10,000 trillion approached our planet closest.
“With NASA and other companies investing in and developing nuclear power for use in space travel and colonization, the reality of asteroid mining is closer than ever before,” said Bob Goldstein, CEO of US Nuclear Corp.
With proven successful experiments in fusion energy, the US nuclear and magneto-inertial fusion technologies (MIFTI) believe they are only a few years away from the construction of the world’s first fusion power generator.
Fusion energy releases up to four times more energy than fission and uses fuel that is light, cheap, safe and sustainable.
A spacecraft with fusion propulsion systems can reach the asteroid belt in just seven months. According to Goldstein, it could be powerful enough to transport the asteroid to orbit, where it would be much more efficient to mine and transport these valuable resources to Earth.
By Mining.com
More important articles from Oilprice.com: