Scientific American 201907

(Rick Simeone) #1
64 Scientific American, July 2019

energy to solar panels. Astronauts could stage bases
here to extract the water sitting conveniently nearby at
the bottom of these craters, where permanently shad­
owed regions have allowed ice to accumulate.
Each pole contains roughly half a dozen of these
Peaks of Eternal Light, which are roughly a few hun­
dred meters across apiece. Given this relative scarci­
ty, it is easy to see why the principle of noninterfer­
ence could be a useful way for nations to claim terri­
tory. “They’re so small no one else can land on one
without risking damage to a spacecraft that’s already
there,” says Ian Crawford, a planetary scientist at
Birkbeck, University of London, who has studied
lunar resources. “The first companies or nations that
land on these peaks, regardless of the legal niceties,
will de facto have ownership.”

LEGAL LOOPHOLES
the outer space treaty was written half a century ago,
mainly by two countries—the U.S. and U.S.S.R.—that at
the time were the only ones that could even dream of

reaching the moon. Legal scholars have debated the
treaty’s implications ever since, and recent develop­
ments, such as the rise of commercial spaceflight, have
raised issues that were not on anyone’s radar back then.
In 2015 Congress sparked an international dis­
agreement by passing the U.S. Commercial Space
Launch Competitiveness Act, which specified that
although no one can claim property on a celestial
body, any material extracted from one is legally owned
by the entity that did the mining and can therefore be
sold for profit. Representatives from Russia, Brazil
and elsewhere subsequently made an uproar at a
March 2017 meeting of the United Nations Committee
on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), stat­
ing that off­world mining was a type of de facto appro­
priation and that a global consortium was needed to
regulate extraction operations.
Other countries have sided with the U.S.—includ­
ing nations such as Luxembourg, which would like to

be a major player in space­based resources—in its
more laissez­faire interpretation of the law. Chinese
delegates at COPUOS have mostly threaded the nee­
dle between the two sides, appearing to wait and see
which reading will eventually prevail. “International
law is made by the states collectively,” says Frans von
der Dunk, a law professor specializing in space at the
University of Nebraska–Lincoln. “If one says this is
legal and another says this requires an international
regime and licensing, then you have a big problem on
your hands.”
As things stand today, highly desirable areas of the
moon are likely to be acquired on a first­come­first­
served basis, rewarding the wealthy countries and
companies that can get there soon. Less affluent
nations could store up animosity toward those that
stake claims, stoking tensions much like in the situa­
tion now in the South China Sea, Crawford says. At the
moment there is no way to ensure that scientifically
interesting regions remain pristine. We should con­
front these conundrums before exploitation begins in
earnest, says Tony Milligan, an eth­
icist at King’s College London and
Elvis’s co­author. “Once you have a
regular presence on the moon, the
law begins to look very different,
and the colossal loopholes that you
can drive spaceships through sud­
denly stand out in much sharper
relief,” he observes.
To many, the Chinese space pro­
gram, with its political will and
technological capabilities, appears
to have a leg up on the competition.
Chinese engineers have suggested
that they can place a craft on the
surface of the moon with centime­
ter­scale accuracy. Their upcoming
set of Chang’e lunar missions
intends to bring back samples and
survey the poles in high detail. It might be in the best
interests of other countries to begin working on rules
that could rein in potential rivals, even if it means giv­
ing up some autonomy, von der Dunk says.
Some groups are already trying. A few years ago
Tanja Masson­Zwaan, a space law expert at Leiden
University in the Netherlands, co­founded the Hague
International Space Resources Governance Working
Group, an organization that has brought together gov­
ernment, industry and academia, among others, to
come up with recommendations for off­world mining.
In 2017 the group produced the building blocks for a
legal framework of principles that aim to balance the
interests of various stakeholders in accordance with
international law. Masson­Zwaan recommends estab­
lishing something akin to the International Telecom­
munication Union, an agency at the U.N. that allo­
cates satellite orbits and slices of the radio spectrum
among nations for moon mining.

The Outer Space Treaty was


written half a century ago, mainly


by two countries—the U.S. and


U.S.S.R.—that at the time were


the only ones that could even


dream of reaching the moon.

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