A space race is on as U.S., China pursue plans to tap into the moon’s resources

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For more than a half-century, an international treaty has established a fundamental rule for exploration beyond the bounds of Earth: No country can assert sovereignty to outer space.

But as suspicions deepen between the U.S. and rival space powers, distrust and competing commercial ambitions stand behind the immensely expensive new efforts to land astronauts – and perhaps, one day, miners and manufacturers – on the moon.

The expected first launch this week of an uncrewed flight by NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket called the Space Launch System, the world’s most powerful, marks an important step forward in the US$93-billion Artemis mission to extend the reach of humans in space, to the moon and beyond. A first attempt was scrubbed on Monday; another attempt is likely on Saturday.

At stake is not just the national pride that drove the last space race. Today, the potential to secure prized resources – and a fear that others, too, are on the hunt for lunar supplies of water and metals – is among the reasons the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration is seeking to set new footprints in lunar dust, even as China pursues plans to achieve the same.

“Nobody can appropriate the moon for national sovereignty. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t utilize the resources of the moon,” said Jim Bridenstine, the former NASA administrator who championed the Artemis program, which also includes contributions from space agencies in Europe, Japan and Canada, with a new generation of the Canadarm.

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Mr. Bridenstine likened the moon to international waters, which do not fall under sovereign boundaries. Nonetheless, “if you extract tuna from the ocean, you can own the tuna. And if you extract oil from the ocean, you can own the oil,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

“I think the same rules would apply on the moon.”

The moon is not a small place. With a surface area nearly four times that of Canada, even a sprawling lunar operation would occupy a tiny sliver of its terrain.

But NASA has already sounded an alarm about what others intend to do. There should be great concern about China “landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,’ ” NASA’s current administrator, Bill Nelson, told Bild, the German tabloid, this summer. (The Chinese government accused Mr. Nelson of lying “through his teeth.”)

A Chinese government document released earlier this year lays out a series of five-year plans for space, including an ambition to work with others to “build an international research station on the moon.” Such a base could be established by 2027, state media have reported.

It’s not clear when Artemis could land people on the moon, but Brendan Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute, believes China will get there “a year or two before the United States does.”

For China, however, beating the U.S. to the moon in this new era of exploration would confer prestige, Mr. Mulvaney said, alongside other advantages. “I’m sure they want to safeguard what they think would be valuable resources if they get there first and can block off at least a portion of that.”

That’s one reason why NASA and its partners feel new pressure to get back to the moon.

“I hope we’re there first,” said Dan Dumbacher, a former NASA program director who is now executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Primacy imparts more than bragging rights. If humans re-establish a presence on the moon – and if commercial interests begin exploration there – many legal and other oversight questions will need to be determined. China, in its white paper, makes extensive reference to Beijing’s role in modernizing space governance.

But “I would rather us be on that road setting the rules of the road, rather than relying on others that may not share our values,” said Mr. Dumbacher. And “you have to be present to have influence.”

Is it worth the cost? NASA has in recent years done a “terribly poor” job of justifying its spending priorities, said Malcolm O’Neill, a retired lieutenant-general who was assistant secretary of the Army, served as a senior leader in Ronald Regan’s Star Wars program and led the country’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

With the estimated tens of billions of dollars that will be poured into Artemis, “you could send a lot of kids to college,” Mr. O’Neill said. He believes space is already becoming the most important frontier for national security: “It’s going to be more important than the sea, the ground and the air.”

But that is orbital space, not the moon. Satellites orbiting Earth have brought innovations such as satellite imagery, GPS navigation and telecommunications. He questions the value of going too far from Earth. “What’s the engineering product that you get from a place like the moon or Mars?” he asked.

Mr. Bridenstine has an answer for that. Astronauts working in the microgravity of the International Space Station have done scientific work on immunization and three-dimensional printing of human tissue that cannot be done in Earth’s gravity. But orbit carries risks for humans, who lose muscle mass and are exposed to large amounts of radiation. On the moon, astronauts could work in places protected from radiation, while remaining in a lower-gravity environment.

The moon also brings other opportunities. If it can be extracted, ice can support human life and fuel, through the extraction of hydrogen from water. Scientists also believe asteroid strikes have left deposits of valuable metals not fractured and buried by the geologic and hydrologic forces on Earth.

Mars, meanwhile, could yield the first hard evidence of life outside Earth.

“It’s very important that we go make a discovery if there’s a discovery to be made,” Mr. Bridenstine said.

He sees a distinct echo from history in the current return to the moon. While the U.S. has repeatedly landed on Mars and sent probes to many corners of the solar system, China has also now landed on Mars, begun to explore the dark side of the moon, established its own satellite navigation system and – is building its own space station.

“We want to continue to move forward and be successful and be pre-eminent in technology – and, of course, be pre-eminent in space as well,” Mr. Bridenstine said.

“I mean, that’s kind of what got the United States to the moon the first time.”

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