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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – NASA on Thursday launched an effort to pay companies to extract resources on the Moon, announcing it would buy rocks, soil and other lunar materials from them as the US space agency seeks to stimulate private extraction of the coveted resources. aliens. for your use.
FILE PHOTO: A woman photographs the Pink Supermoon over Smetovi Mountain, during an astronomical event that occurs when the moon is closer to Earth in its orbit, making it appear much larger and brighter than usual, in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 7. , 2020. REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / File Photo
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in a blog post accompanying the announcement that the plans would not violate a 1967 treaty that states that the celestial bodies and space are exempt from national property claims.
The initiative, aimed at companies planning to send robots to mine lunar resources, is part of NASA’s goal to establish what Bridenstine called “standards of behavior” in space and enable private mining on the moon in ways that could help support future astronaut missions. NASA said it believes that the extracted resources are the property of the company and that the materials would become “the exclusive property of NASA” after purchase.
Within the framework of NASA’s Artemis program, the administration of President Donald Trump anticipates the return of American astronauts to the moon by 2024. NASA has presented this mission as a precursor to a future first human trip to Mars.
“The bottom line is that we are going to buy some lunar soil in order to show that it can be done,” Bridenstine said during an event organized by the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organization.
Bridenstine said NASA would eventually buy more kinds of resources like ice and other materials that can be discovered on the moon.
In May, NASA set the stage for a global debate on the basic principles that govern how people will live and work on the moon, publishing the main principles of what it hopes will become an international compact for lunar exploration. called the Artemis Accords. This would allow companies to own the lunar resources they mine, a crucial element in enabling NASA contractors to convert the moon’s water ice into rocket fuel or extract lunar minerals to build runways.
According to the initiative released Thursday, NASA offered to purchase limited quantities of lunar resources and asked companies to offer proposals. Under contracts whose terms would vary, a company exploiting on the Moon would collect lunar rocks or soil to sell to NASA without having to bring the resources to Earth.
“This is a small step for space resources, but a big step for politics and precedent,” Mike Gold, NASA’s head of international relations, told Reuters.
“They are paying the company to sell them a stone that they own. That’s the product, ”Joanne Gabrynowicz, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, said in an interview. “A company has to decide for itself whether it is worth taking the financial and technological risk of doing this to sell a stone.”
Joey Roulette Report in Washington; Edited by Will Dunham
