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NASA has awarded contracts to four private companies to collect space resources and transfer ownership to the agency.
The contracts, confirmed on Thursday, mark the first commercial transaction related to the collection of lunar resources, as well as the first space resource transaction to take place beyond Earth.
The lunar regolith prices will range between $ 1 (€ 0.82) and $ 15,000 (€ 12,327); the contracts are primarily intended to set a legal precedent for the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources by the private sector in the future.
“It is quite extraordinary that we can buy lunar regolith (material that covers the bedrock of a planet) from four companies for a total of $ 25,001 (€ 20,546),” said Phil McAlister, director of this program at NASA.
How will the exchange work?
The companies will collect a small amount of lunar regolith from anywhere on the Moon. They will then provide images of the collection to NASA, as well as material and data identifying the location of the operation.
Following the collection of images and data, ownership of the lunar regolith will be transferred to NASA, becoming its sole property for the agency’s use under the Artemis program.
The companies that have been awarded the contracts are Lunar Outpost ($ 1 contract), ispace Japan and ispace Europe ($ 5,000 each) and Masten Space Systems ($ 15,000). NASA’s payment is exclusively for the lunar regolith.
The companies’ collection robots will travel on planned lunar landing missions, funded by entities other than NASA, which will land in 2022 and 2023.
Property rights outside the Earth
At this stage, NASA’s main objective is to start a new phase of space exploration in which private companies participate. The agency will determine the recovery methods for the transferred lunar regolith at a later date.
The private sector is participating to find minerals and other resources, such as water, and to explore the possibilities of living and producing fuel outside the Earth, all with legal protection.
“We believe it is very important to set the precedent that private sector entities can extract, can take these resources, but NASA can buy them and use them to drive not just NASA activities, but a dynamic new era of public exploration and development. and private on the Moon, “said Mike Gold, a senior NASA official in charge of international relations.
“Leveraging business engagement enhances our ability to safely return to the Moon in a sustainable, innovative and affordable way,” added McAlister. “A supportive policy for the recovery and use of space resources provides a stable and predictable investment environment for commercial space innovators and entrepreneurs.”
The United States has said, in what it called the Artemis Accords, that it reserves the right to create “safe zones” to protect activities on a celestial body. Artemis is the program with which the country plans to return to the Moon with two astronauts in 2024.
Mike Gold assured that these new activities would be carried out “in accordance with the space treaty”, adding that “it is important that the United States be a leader not only technologically, but also politically.”
It was established that the companies would receive 10% of the total proposed price after the award of the contracts, another 10% at the launch and the remaining 80% after the successful completion of the project.
