Scientific American 201907

62 Scientific American, July 2019

Back in the 1960s, it seemed like just a matter of

time before humanity would slip the bonds of Earth

and begin a slow crawl out into the universe. Although

it has taken longer than many expected, something

like that moment may soon arrive. Around half a doz­

en governments, as well as a handful of private com­

panies, all have moon missions planned for the near

future—a situation ripe for conflict.

The Outer Space Treaty, which the U.S., the U.K.

and the Soviet Union signed less than two years be ­

fore Apollo 11 (and which now has 109 countries par­

ty to it), stipulates that space exploration must be

conducted peacefully and for the benefit of all

nations. It also holds that no one can claim territory

on a celestial body. But lower down in the treaty is a

loophole: two “noninterference clauses,” which re ­

quire all signatories to avoid causing harm to anoth­

er’s probes or outposts—for instance, by landing near

or on top of them. This sounds reasonable enough,

but it also creates an opening for a nation or private

entity to monopolize a desirable spot simply by arriv­

ing there first.

Should one nation or entity try to stake a claim, it

“might trigger a ‘scramble for the Moon’ comparable

in some respects to the ‘scramble for Africa’ which

began with the identification of mineral resources in

the Congo in the 1880s,” wrote astrophysicist Martin

Elvis of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard Uni­

versity and the Smithsonian Institution and his co­

authors in a 2016 paper in the journal Space Policy.

Sure enough, several missions scheduled to take

place in the next few years all target the same terri­

A

grainy black­and­white image plays across the screen in one of bob

Richards’s earliest memories—spacesuits, a lander and astronauts

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin taking their historic first steps across

the lunar surface. Richards, who was barely out of his toddler years

at the time, recalls sitting in his family living room north of Toronto

while his dad futzed with the rabbit­ear antenna, trying to improve the

broadcast streaming over from Buffalo, N.Y. “ Apollo 11 was a defining

moment for humanity,” says the founder and CEO of Moon Express, a company that hopes to

sell transportation to our natural satellite and eventually mine materials there. “The inspira­

tion of Apollo is very prominent in what’s happening today in space.”

Adam Mann is a journalist specializing in

astronomy and physics. His work has

appeared in National Geographic, the Wall

Street Journal, Wired and elsewhere.

IN BRIEF

A large number of countries and private compa-

nies are aiming to launch missions to the moon

in the coming decade.

International law says no one can own property in

space—yet it also says that once an entity has landed

somewhere, others should avoid disturbing that site.

This loophole creates the potential for a race

to stake claims on some of the moon’s highest-

value real estate.