One giant leap for commercial space exploration could have created a giant headache for those looking to regulate the lunar frontier.
As Intuitive Machines celebrated the safe touchdown on Thursday of Odysseus, the static lander that is helping to pave the way for the creation of “moonkind”, lawyers called attention to the pressing question: who runs the moon?
“Anything goes on the moon right now,” said Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.
“The law only says that we have to use the moon for peaceful purposes and we can’t put military installations on it. You can basically go and put whatever you want on the moon, as long as it’s not a nuclear weapon.”
When a Cold War space race began in the 1950s, there were only two contenders. The Soviet Union won the first heats, launching Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, into orbit in 1957 and Yuri Gagarin, the first human, in 1961.
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However, the United States took the winner’s medal by getting the Apollo 11 crew on to the moon in 1969, with five more manned lunar landings following.
Now there is a bustling field of runners and riders working on plans to explore, settle and develop the moon — many as a combined effort under the auspices of Nasa’s Artemis programme.
But the rise of a robust, capable commercial sector and, separately, the shadow of geopolitical rivalries has renewed contemplation of the need for governance. As the commercialisation of space expands, who gets to decide if McDonald’s can erect a billboard on the Sea of Tranquillity, space-watchers want to know. No laws prevent it at present.
Odysseus, whose customers also include several private ventures, has already established the first advertisement on the moon: the logo of Columbia Sportswear, whose heat-reflective fabric is helping to protect the lander from the harsh temperature fluctuations of space, is displayed on its body.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, negotiated by the United Nations, requires its 114 signatories to show due regard to one another and exercise responsibility in space.
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Hanlon said the treaty contained “so many gaps��. She added: “The concept of establishing safety zones on the moon, for example, is good because if you get too close to someone else’s operation, just driving by could destroy it because of the nature of the regolith [loose rock and dust].” As as example, she said, the first to land could demand a 20-mile safety zone.
The Nasa-led Artemis Accords, a non-binding arrangement setting out principles for the safe, peaceful, prosperous use of space, have been signed by 35 countries not including the spacefaring powers Russia and China.
At the Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington this week, Pam Melroy, Nasa’s deputy administrator and an astronaut, invoked science fiction to warn that the future of space governance required careful curation.
Contrasting Star Trek’s democratic government with Star Wars’s authoritarian legislature and the warring factions depicted in the sci-fi series The Expanse, she asked: “What do we want: the United Federation of Planets or the Imperial Senate? Or, God forbid, The Expanse?”
