Planetary securityLunar Gold Rush Could Create Conflict on the Ground If We Don’t Act Now – New Research
Many countries and private companies have ambitious plans to explore or mine the Moon. This won’t be at some remote point in time but soon – even in this decade. So far, much of the debate around exploring and mining the Moon has focused on tensions in space between state agencies and the private sector. But as we see it, the pressing challenge arises from limited strategic resources.
When it comes to the Moon, everyone wants the same things. Not in the sense of having shared goals, but in the sense that all players target the same strategic sites – state agencies and the private sector alike. That’s because, whether you want to do science or make money, you will need things such as water and light.
Many countries and private companies have ambitious plans to explore or mine the Moon. This won’t be at some remote point in time but soon – even in this decade. As Martin Elvis, Alanna Krolikowski and I set out in a recent paper, published in the Transactions of the Royal Society, this will spark tension on the ground unless we find ways to manage the situation imminently.
So far, much of the debate around exploring and mining the Moon has focused on tensions in space between state agencies and the private sector. But as we see it, the pressing challenge arises from limited strategic resources.
Important sites for science are also important for infrastructure construction by state agencies or commercial users. Such sites include “peaks of eternal light” (where there is almost constant sunlight, and hence access to power), and continually shaded craters at the polar regions, where there’s water ice. Each is rare, and the combination of the two – ice on the crater floor and a narrow peak of eternal light on the crater rim – is a prized target for different players. But they occur only in polar regions, rather than at the equatorial sites targeted by the Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s.
The recent successful landing of Chang’e 5 by China targeted a relatively smooth landing site on the lunar nearside, but it is part of a larger, phased programme due to take China’s space agency down to the lunar south pole by 2024.
India tried a more direct polar route, with its failed Chandrayaan-2 lander crashing in the same region in 2019. The Russian Roscosmos, collaborating with the European Space Agency, is also targeting the south polar region for landings late in 2021 and, in 2023, at Boguslavsky crater, as a test mission. Next, Roscosmos will aim for the Aitken Basin in the same region in 2022 on the to prospect for water in permanently shadowed areas. A number of private companies also have ambitious plans for mining the Moon for resources.
