Science and business are heading for an astronomical conflict over the future exploration of the moon and exploitation of its resources. The celestial conflict threatens to explode over companies’ plans to send dozens of probes to survey the lunar landscape over the next few years. The Peregrine mission, one of the first pioneers, will be launched this week.
The goal of this extraterrestrial armada, funded largely by NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, is to explore the moon so that minerals, water, and other resources can be mined to build permanent, habitable bases there. These would later form a springboard for human missions to Mars.
But astronomers have warned that any attempt to exploit the Moon indefinitely could cause irreparable damage to valuable scientific fields. They say gravitational wave surveys, black hole observations, studies to identify life on small worlds orbiting distant stars and other research could be compromised.
“The problem has become urgent,” said Martin Elvis of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Observer. “We must act now because the decisions we make today will determine the course of our future behavior on the Moon.”
This point was supported by astronomer Professor Richard Green of the University of Arizona. “We are not trying to prevent the construction of moon bases. But there are only a handful of promising sites here, and some of them are incredibly valuable from a scientific point of view. “We need to be very, very careful where we build our mines and bases.”
Later this month, a working group recently established by the International Astronomical Union and chaired by Green will meet with U.N. officials to begin talks that are hoped will lead to strengthening legislation to protect interplanetary resources. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents nations from making territorial claims on celestial bodies, but says nothing about space mining and exploitation of resources, the magazine notes Science warned recently.
Green highlighted one example of the problems scientists face: “It has been discovered that several deep lunar craters have been in shadow since the Moon formed billions of years ago. Since sunlight never reaches their ground, it is incredibly cold; probably only a few dozen degrees above absolute zero. “This makes them very valuable from a scientific point of view.”
Craters like this would be ideal for housing sensitive scientific instruments (e.g. infrared telescopes that need constant cooling), and there are also plans to build such an observatory; small rocky planets orbiting around them. “These are ideal places to look for life, but they are outside the boundaries of existing observatories,” Green said.
In addition, it is thought that these unlit craters may contain water in the form of super-cold ice that did not evaporate as it did elsewhere on the moon in its early history. These sunless seas of ice could reveal valuable information about the history of water’s arrival, possibly via comets, to the Moon and nearby Earth, where it played an important role in the emergence of life.
However, ice-filled craters would also be of invaluable value to those who settled on the Moon and would become irresistible targets for companies and astronauts establishing colonies. “Water will be incredibly important for people on the Moon, but we have to make sure that water is taken from places that are not scientifically irreplaceable,” Elvis said.
Another important region was identified by radio astronomers. It is located on the far side of the Moon, protected from chaotic radio emissions from Earth. This would be an ideal place to build a giant telescope that could detect ultra-low radio waves emanating from the early universe without interference, providing important information about the formation of the first galaxies.
However, NASA and other space agencies have plans to circle the moon with satellites to control robotic rovers and other devices on the lunar surface. Radio signals leaking from these may degrade the sensitivity of the proposed far-side radio telescope.
Currently, the construction of lunar bases and mines is still a distant goal for space engineers. The search for resources is just beginning; but it will soon be making headlines. Many other lunar probes besides Peregrine are scheduled to launch this year as NASA’s CLPS program begins in earnest. Many, like Peregrine, will be built and launched by private companies, including Viper, a robotic rover that will explore the moon’s south pole; Lunar Pioneer, which will examine its surface for water; and Artemis II, which is scheduled to put a four-person crew into lunar orbit later this year.
In this way, resource areas that are vital for the construction and operation of colonies will be revealed. Many of the first robot missions will fail, and the path to exploitation of the Moon will be full of setbacks. However, industrialization of the Moon now looks like a real possibility. This will help science by reducing launch costs, but astronomers emphasize that this should not involve reckless destruction of areas unique to the moon and invaluable to science.
“The problem is that making changes to UN agreements takes a long time, so we must act now if we want to ensure that we have international agreements that will protect and secure the unique scientific features of the moon.” They were not destroyed through thoughtless exploitation, Green said.