by Aparna Venkatesan is an astronomer and dark sky advocate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of San Francisco.
John Barentine is an astronomer, historian, author, science communicator, and founder of Dark Sky Consulting, LLC.
As long as there have been people, the moon has been a calendar, an ancestor, a ritual, an inspiration and an origin story for mankind. Its monthly and more subtle cycles of generation have been carefully recorded and celebrated by cultures around the world since prehistoric times and still are.
These recurring sequences include the “lunar solstices” that occur every 18.6 years, when the moon reaches its farthest north/south point, or the moons within one month. We are now entering the period of the latest major restrictions in 2024-25.
There have been two major milestones since the United States last sent a crewed mission to the moon, Apollo 17 in December 1972. Since then, only four other countries have joined the small club of countries to make soft landings. reach the moon: The next one. Soviet Union, China, and from August 2023, India and Japan. In addition to spacecraft and crashed pieces of space hardware, people left instruments, scientific experiments, and even bags for his spent excrement on our lives nearby.
So we ask in early 2024: Where will humanity, and the moon, be by the next lunar solstice in the early 2040s?
Related: A group of moons pushing to protect the ultraquiet moon side
In the 1960s the United States and the Soviet Union hoped to be the first to achieve the age-old dream of, in the words of US President Kennedy, “landing a man on the moon and returning him safely on the world”. The landing of the Apollo 11 crew on July 20, 1969 was a “great inspiration to mankind” and a demonstration not only of the superiority of US technological know-how, but also, some argued, of its political-economic system.
After the fall of the USSR, its successor state, the Russian Federation, joined the United States as a partner in efforts such as building and operating the International Space Station. It looked like the Space Race was over.
But now a new race to the moon is in full swing, driven as much by the commercial exploitation of lunar resources as it is to unleash military power in the new frontier of outer space, and sense of urgency from “manufactured fear” which reflects the Cold War rather than modern cooperative frameworks. As we write this, there are renewed fears of nuclear threats from orbital space after Russia’s November 2021 anti-satellite test, which generated space debris, in the words of the American Astronomical Society“human spaceflight threatens … the night sky and its accessibility for ground-based astronomy, as well as other scientific, economic, commercial and cultural purposes.”
Due to the changes made by human activities since 1959, historians have recently argued that the moon is entering a new phase of its geological history in which human modification of its surface will exceed the rate of evolution due to natural influences alone. Astronauts returning to the moon in the coming years will be facing a world over six decades into this new era, it was called the “Lunar Anthropocene”..
The name of the new moon era deliberately echoes our own planet’s Anthropocene which increasingly includes its space environment. For the past seven years Human activity has fundamentally changed the orbital space near the Earth. Recently, the pace of this change is accelerating at an alarming rate. According to the European Space Agencythe number of known objects in Earth’s orbit has doubled since 2015.
Space debris is also on the rise. Collisions between space objects — some accidental, others intentional — create cascades of debris, and each component poses a collision risk to other objects. More than 50 tonnes of rubbish could be produced intentionally every week by the end of this decade, with unknown consequences for the chemistry of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, oceans and every life in the world. In addition, thousands of operational satellites orbiting the planet are already interfering with ground observations for radio astronomy as well as optical and infrared astronomy (SATCON1 and SATCON2 reports).
The moon is not far behind. Orbital congestion, environmental degradation and expected consequences of increased light and radio-frequency pollution from the new lunar space race, mirroring the effects of similar activities near our planet. These developments threaten the potential that the moon represents for unique scientific research activities, such as the most sensitive radio astronomy measurements ever made from the side of the moon. Soon, the airless moon will no longer be a “quiet” celestial object; instead, it will be bristling with human-generated radio energy.
The moon represents not only shared history (the solar system) and scientific opportunity, but also shared heritage and cultural-religious significance for many world cultures, including indigenous peoples.
Current practices of state and private space actors violate cultural beliefs, including in January 2024 when the Falcon One Astrobotic mission attempted to transport human remains to the moon, resulting in widespread criticism from Indigenous communities and international outcry.
The Navajo Nation in particular issued a statement to NASA, reminding them of the need for consultation in light of the 26-year history of discrediting this problem which represents a “sacred place in Navajo cosmology”. A number of Indigenous-led calls have since ceased the practice of sending human (and pet) remains to the moon. Therefore, the moon is at risk of not only becoming a war zone in the future but federally subsidized grave.
The moon has been our satellite for nearly 4.5 billion years, and despite its annual drift of a few centimeters a year from Earth, it will remain our closest and most visible companion on Earth for billions of years to come. So the current rush to occupy cislunar space and the moon is incomprehensible, with an unquantified trade-off between science and security gains against possible permanent loss of geological records of early solar system history; environmental and biocontamination of the lunar surface and atmosphere; and desecration of cultural beliefs around the moon.
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As more lunar exploration initiatives emerge, one must ask: Will we responsibly and sustainably protect the ability of future generations to practice scientific and cultural traditions on, near or relative to the moon? And will we be able to develop lunar land ethics? With the number of active government and private space actors rising rapidly, and the proliferation of pre-approved space initiatives that circumvent the treaty, it will take courage and vision for any nation or nations to deliberately set the precedent moving forward in ways that bring honor. the scientific-cultural heritage of humanityprioritizing the “right way” over “right now.”
This feels especially urgent because of the first US landing on the moon in 51 years by the private US-based Intuitive Machines two weeks ago, carrying scientific experiments as well as a man-made “leave behind” on a surface the moon as the “Koons moons“.
Examples like this urgently need to address gaps in the language of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and recently Agreements of Artemissuch as the growing role of private companies in space and whether their missions, lunar or otherwise, are aligned with the ambitious ideals of the Artemis Accords regarding the preservation of heritage or the benefits of space exploration for all of humanity.
