Former astronaut Chris Hadfield, on Nov. 23, 2019, is teaming up with King Charles to craft a space sustainability plan.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Chris Hadfield says he’s been working with King Charles on a space sustainability plan dubbed the Astra Carta.
The Astra Carta will explore how humans can use space and settle the moon in a different way than they have settled on Earth, the Canadian astronaut said Tuesday.
“We have a clean slate with the moon,” he told The Canadian Press on the sidelines of the Super Session, a Toronto conference held by the Creative Destruction Lab, a non-profit helping science and tech firms.
“There’s no life on the moon, so we’re not disrupting an ecology.”
Hadfield has been working on the initiative since last summer, when the British monarch, who has long been outspoken on environmental issues, reached out to him for help. They plan to release a version of the Astra Carta on June 28 in London.
Hadfield hopes the Astra Carta will evolve into a document that will engage many decision makers across the globe and guide some of the fundamental patterns around human and legal behaviour in new territories like space.