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In the midst of the global pandemic crisis, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, has found time to sign a Executive order outlining a new United States policy on the recovery and use of resources on the Moon, including water and minerals.
Despite the pandemic, the move has received largely critical global attention. But there are also some looking to partner with the US. USA In the lunar exploration.
The executive order read that Americans “should have the right to participate in the commercial exploration, recovery and use of resources in outer space, in accordance with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and The United States does not see it as a global common good. ”
The United States seeking “the right to participate in the commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space” may be in line with international law. However, it is controversial because it is not clear who, other than national courts, could enforce mining rights, and national courts, in turn, cannot do so without exercising sovereign rights, since lawyers have pointed.
But the explicit statement that outer space will not be considered as part of the global commons is new.
Space powers have generally been uncomfortable with the idea of space as a global common because this was thought to prevent mining and the extraction of space resources.
This was an important reason why the US USA And many other nations sailing in space, such as the Soviet Union / Russia, China and Japan and even many of the countries that make up the European space consortium refused to sign the Moon treaty. India is the only space power to have signed the treaty, although New Delhi has not yet done so. ratified.
Following the Executive Order, Dr. Scott Pace, Deputy Assistant to the President and Executive Secretary of the National Space Council, set in a press release that while the US USA “Prepared to return humans to the Moon and travel to Mars, this Executive Order sets forth US policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage space development trade. ”
He then added that “the order reaffirms the United States’ support for the 1967 Outer Space Treaty while continuing to reject the 1979 Moon Agreement, which only 17 of the 95 Member States of the United Nations Commission on Peaceful Uses from Outer Space have ratified in the last four decades. “
He also noted that the Executive Order “reinforces the 2015 Congress decision that Americans should have the right to participate in commercial exploration, recovery and the use of resources in outer space.”
This Executive Order should be viewed in light of this 2015 U.S. law that Dr. Pace referenced, the “Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015”, signed by President Barack Obama, which allows American companies to extract space resources.
A second document related to the Executive Order is NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program. Last week NASA came out with a report, the Plan for sustained lunar exploration and development, which outlines plans for long-term space exploration. The reports detail plans for the coming years, which include humans returning to the Moon and a later mission to “also locate and build the infrastructure, systems, and robotic missions that can enable a sustained presence on the lunar surface.” . To do this, NASA wants to “develop Artemis base camp at the Moon’s South Pole.”
A telescopic image of Copernicus’s crater on the Moon, taken as part of a lunar atlas project, using a telescope built in the Arizona mountains by Gerard Kuiper.
Lunar and Planetary Laboratory / University of Arizona
In the lunar exploration of water and other minerals, a White House space adviser is reported to have saying The media said that “it was important to clarify what the United States’ policy towards the Moon Agreement was and then present a more positive vision in the future.” Section 2 of the Executive Order talks about the Moon Agreement, saying that the United States is not a party to the Agreement; and that the USA USA do not believe that “the Moon Agreement is an effective or necessary instrument to guide national states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery and use of the Moon, Mars or others celestial bodies . ”
Trump has also directed the Secretary of State to oppose any state or multilateral organization that regards the Moon Agreement as customary international law.
The other aspect that is emphasized in the Executive Order is that the United States seeks collaboration with like-minded partners. To this end, Trump has directed the Secretary of State to prepare bilateral and multilateral declarations of intent and arrangements “with respect to safe and sustainable operations for the recovery and public and private use of space resources.”
The President has sought action on this within 180 days. It is unclear what happens to the body of work performed by Hague Space Resources Governance Working Group who has been working to develop a legal framework for the use of space resources found in asteroids and other celestial bodies.
While most countries with space capacity have not yet formally responded to the Executive Order, the Russian Roscosmos deputy director in charge of international cooperation is reported to have He said that Trump’s executive order is “comparable” to colonialism. The Roscosmos has set that “Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to truly seize the territories of other planets hardly establish fruitful cooperation for the countries.” The Kremlin is also reported to have remarked that “any colonization of space would be” unacceptable “”.
The United States is not the only country that has plans for the Moon and other celestial bodies. China also has ambitious plans in this regard. A few years ago, Ye Peijian, commander-in-chief and designer of China’s lunar exploration program set that China would send the first batch of asteroid exploration spacecraft around 2020.
Ye additional that “many of the asteroids near Earth contain high concentrations of precious metals”, which could rationalize the enormous cost and risks involved in these activities. He calculated that its economic value would be trillions of US dollars.
Despite its criticism of the U.S. move, Russia is no slouch when it comes to asteroid mining and other space exploration plans, either. Russia plans have a permanent base on the Moon somewhere after 2025 for possible helium extraction. In the mid-2000s, Russia had He said which will have a moon base between 2015 and 2025. These plans appear to have been delayed due to internal difficulties. Furthermore, both Russia and China also plan team up, bringing scientific payloads to their respective Luna-26 and Chang’e-7 spacecraft sometime in the 2020s. They also plan to establish a joint lunar and deep space data center with centers in both countries.
Given the changing balance of power dynamics, outer space dominance is once again becoming a victim of great competition and power rivalry.
To minimize the detrimental impact of this competition and establish a certain amount of predictability in outer space affairs, various efforts have been made to develop certain global rules of the road. But these efforts have made no progress.
The latest United Nations Group of Government Experts (GGE) on Prevention of an arms race in outer space is a good example. With this Executive Order, another line may have been crossed in the increasingly competitive space race.
Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan is a distinguished member and head of the Observer Research Foundation’s Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative.
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