by Science and business are facing an astronomical conflict – with the future exploration of the moon and the exploitation of its resources. The company’s plans to send dozens of probes to survey the lunar landscape in the next few years threaten to break out of the celestial sphere. An early pioneer – the Hawk mission – mission one – is due to launch this week.
This extraterrestrial army – largely funded by NASA’s $2.6bn Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative – aims to survey the moon to extract minerals, water and other resources for bases to build a permanent habitable place there. These would later provide a springboard for manned missions to Mars.
But astronomers have warned that an unrestrained rush to exploit the moon could cause irreparable damage to precious science sites. Research of gravitational waves, observations of black holes, studies to find life on tiny worlds orbiting distant stars, and other research may be in jeopardy, they say.
“The issue has become urgent,” Martin Elvis, of the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told the Observer. “We must act now because decisions made today will set the stage for our behavior on the moon in the future.”
Astronomer Richard Green, from the University of Arizona, supported this point. “We don’t want to block the construction of moon bases. However, there are only a handful of promising sites and some of these are of great scientific value. We have to be very careful when we build our mines and bases.”
Later this month, a group – recently established by the International Astronomical Union and led by Green – will meet with UN officials to begin negotiations that will hopefully result in strengthening legislation to protect interplanetary resources. . The 1967 treaty prohibits nations from making territorial claims on celestial bodies, but says nothing about space mining and resource exploitation, the magazine Science recent warning.
Green highlighted the problem facing scientists: “A few deep lunar craters have been found to be in shadow since the moon was formed billions of years ago. Sunlight has never reached their floor so they are extremely cold – probably only a few dozen degrees above absolute. And that makes them very valuable scientifically.”
A crater like this would be ideal for placing sensitive scientific instruments – such as infrared telescopes that need to be constantly cooled – and there are plans to build such an observatory, one powerful enough to detect stars in distant, narrow to observe that it may exist. small rocky planets orbiting them. “These are great places to look for life but they’re beyond the limits of current observatories,” Green said.
In addition, it is thought that water in these shallow craters may exist in the form of super-cold ice that did not evaporate as it did elsewhere on the moon during its early history. These sunless seas of ice could reveal valuable information about the history of the arrival of water, perhaps via comets, on the moon – and on nearby Earth where it played a central role in the appearance of life.
However, craters filled with ice would be valuable in the eyes of lunar colonists and would be irresistible targets for companies and astronauts establishing colonies. “Water will be very important for people on the moon but we have to make sure it is taken from places that are scientifically irreplaceable,” said Elvis.
Another prime position has been reserved for radio astronomers. It is located on the far side of the moon, which is protected from the chaotic radio emissions that pour from Earth. It would be a great place to set up a huge telescope that could detect ultra-low radio waves coming from the early universe and provide vital information about the formation of the first galaxies – without disturbing them.
However, NASA – and other space agencies – have plans to circle the moon with satellites to control robots and other devices on the lunar surface. Radio signals leaking from these could destroy the sensitivity of the radio telescope planned for the far side.
Currently, the construction of lunar bases and mines remains a distant goal for space engineers. Resources are just getting started – although there will be headlines soon. Besides the Hawk, several other lunar probes are slated for launch this year as NASA’s CLPS program begins in earnest. Many will be built and launched by private companies, such as Peregrine, and will include Viper, a robot rover that will survey the moon’s south pole; Lunar Trailblazer that will survey its surface for water; and Artemis II which is planned to put a crew of four into lunar orbit later this year.
In this way, the resource locations will be revealed which will be crucial to building and running colonies. Many early robotic missions will fail and the road to lunar exploration will be strewn with obstacles. However, it appears that there is now a moon industrialization. This will help science by reducing launch costs but, as the astronomers stress, sites unique to the moon and invaluable to science should not be recklessly destroyed.
“The difficulty is that changes to UN treaties take a long time, so we need to act now if we hope to ensure that we have international agreements in place to protect the unique scientific aspects of the moon and ensure. they are not destroyed by thoughtless exploitation,” Green said.
