Extract from ABC News
As the space race heats up there are moves to begin mining on the Moon. (NASA)
In short:
As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon could be mined.
Scientists say the first step is understanding what resources are actually there.
What's next?
Before mining on the Moon can advance there are technological challenges that need to be overcome, as well as ethical, legal and environmental considerations.
Since Neil Armstrong took his giant step for mankind onto the Moon almost 60 years ago, small samples from the lunar surface have been brought back to Earth.
The samples provide a glimpse into what minerals are in the lunar regolith and missions such as Artemis II provide greater understanding of the Moon's environment.
As technology advances amid the race to send people to Mars, scientists and corporations are exploring how the Moon can be mined.
Here is a breakdown of some of the physical, environmental, legal and ethical challenges involved in Moon mining, according to a scientist, an engineer, a lawyer and an archaeologist.
First steps for extracting resources
Machines such as NASA's RASSOR (Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot) are being tested for suitability to use on the Moon. (NASA)
CSIRO Mineral Resources senior principal research scientist Jonathon Ralston has been involved in developing mining technology for the Moon and Mars.
He says the first step is to gain an understanding of the environment in a similar way to how prospecting and exploration digs are conducted before resource extraction on Earth.
"And the exciting thing is we've been there a couple of times with the Apollo missions but there's so much more to learn about the Moon and there's a lot of unknown uncertainties," Dr Ralston said.
"When people use this term 'mining on the Moon', it's really much more closer to scientific exploration to understand what the local resources are there first before we can then start doing exciting things."
Sophia Casanova says there is a long way to go before mining on the Moon is possible. (Supplied)
Sophia Casanova is an Australian scientist based in Europe who designs surface missions for ispace, a private company that aims to transport payloads to the Moon or lunar orbit.
She said the technology that would enable mining on the Moon was still in its infancy, though companies were sending small components of the eventual process chain into space.
Looking for ground truth
In 2019, 50 years after the first Apollo mission landed on the Moon, NASA re-examined its lunar samples.
The CSIRO has a lab to test rovers for use on the Moon's surface. (Supplied: CSIRO)
"They've been studied extensively to understand what the actual materials are and there's been a lot of work with people then basically creating analogues of those materials so they could do testing here on Earth," Dr Ralston said.
"The other aspect is there's been lots of orbital satellite technologies scanning the Moon for its composition. But what we're really looking for now is that ground truth.
"We want to have more ground-based missions that can do that calibration, and validation techniques so we can really understand what the material is in the moon, both on the surface and the subsurface, so that we can then make good decisions about what ways might we best make use of those resources to basically support mission activities."
Minerals in the regolith
Analysis of the lunar regolith has shown it is made up of about 50 per cent silica, along with a range of trace metals and other minerals.
Some missions have identified ice in regions on the Moon that are never touched by the Sun.
"There's a very, very excited group of people with the prospect of basically water ice on the Moon, which is a fantastic resource that could be utilised for both life support and also propulsion systems for the hydrogen and the oxygen as well," Dr Ralston said.
NASA estimates there are a million tonnes of helium-3 — an isotope rare on Earth — on the Moon.
Rare earth metals, which are used in smartphones, computers and advanced technologies, are also present on the Moon, including scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides, according to research by Boeing.
A private company based in Seattle, Interlune, is aiming to be the first US company to commercialise resources from space, starting with helium-3 from the Moon.
Helium-3 is used as a coolant, including in cryogenics, making it useful for data storage.
Dr Ralston said opinion was divided on whether helium-3 was present in a high enough concentration and that the big challenge would be developing methods to recover it and transport it back to Earth.
ispace is testing rovers for use on the Moon's surface. (ispace)
Dr Casanova said a lot of the focus was on understanding what the environment was like on the lunar south pole.
"So it's still quite a way off from any sort of extraction-level processes or big processes," she said.
"The technologies are very small demonstrations. We're still very constrained by the power and energy that's required for these technologies and the harshness of the space environment."
One of the other major minerals on the lunar surface is ilmenite, which is very rich in oxygen. There are also metals, including iron and titanium, that could be extracted.
A petrol station in space?
When people refer to resource extraction on the Moon, they generally do not mean to say that the materials would be brought back to Earth, but rather would be used in space.
Water is important because it can be separated into its components — hydrogen and oxygen — which can then be used as propellant or fuel for spacecraft.
"Essentially a petrol-station-in-space kind of concept — and a necessary one if we're looking [at] sending humans to Mars or for deeper space operations in the long-term," Dr Casanova said.
The lunar surface was a very challenging environment to operate in, Dr Casanova said, due to massive swings in temperature, and the material itself posed design challenges.
"The regolith material itself is very sharp, abrasive, and kicks up a lot of dust, which can interfere with the engineering design of all the functionality of the rovers," she said.
Rovers — remote-controlled vehicles designed to travel on the Moon's surface — have gathered information to help scientists better understand how to address the complexities of operating in such a harsh environment.
Dr Casanova said there were a lot of technological advances needed before any significant mining could be carried out on the Moon.
"There's a lot of challenges when it comes to resource-specific questions and technologies, because these technologies that we use on Earth, they're big, they're heavy, they're power-hungry, they can be less precise and they're not as constrained," she said.
The Artemis II mission is expected to further scientific knowledge. (NASA: Brandon Hancock)
Protecting the Moon
Space archaeologist Alice Gorman has been working on how to protect the lunar environment.
She said there had been increasing interest in resource extraction from the Moon.
"It's unfortunately a little bit similar to the Cold War space race," Dr Gorman said.
"There's an amount of national prestige involved in sending a surface mission and in successfully getting data or demonstrating that you're a little bit closer to lunar mining.
"A lot of the motivations for going to the Moon to mine are not actually about the ability to use resources or a commitment to lunar science.
"One of the concerns is that commercial operations will actually destroy the science that needs to be carried out."
She said it was paramount to have a thorough understanding of the impacts resource extraction would have on the Moon to prevent it from being irreversibly harmed.
"On Earth we're used to environments renewing themselves, bouncing back," Dr Gorman said.
"You can still cause incredible environmental harm, but we also have a sort of faith that rivers will keep flowing, vegetation will grow back and ecosystems can recover.
"But on the Moon it's not like that — processes are completely different, they happen at different timescales and we don't understand what are the longer-term impacts of moving lunar dust.
"One thing a number of lunar scientists have agreed is that it would be possible to move enough dust up into orbit around the moon, so there would be a dust cloud around the Moon."
If that happened, it could have catastrophic consequences for animals on Earth that depend on moonlight, such as some species of owl and marine turtles, she said.
The Artemis II crew took this photograph of the Moon's Vavilov Crater. (NASA)
Dr Casanova and Dr Ralston agree that lunar mining will be different to terrestrial mining and that caution is needed.
"When we talk about extracting resources on the Moon, it's not big trucks that are just picking up rock — we have to be very careful with this environment, so there will not be big coal trucks kicking up material and dust and everything," Dr Casanova said.
"There will be very precise movements, very precise activities to extract these resources, very little disturbance."
From the Moon to Mars
Mining on Earth almost always involves large amounts of water and energy.
But on the Moon there is no carbon and no liquid water.
"The very challenges that we need to address to do processing of resources on the Moon are exactly the kind of technologies we also need here right on Earth as well," Dr Ralston said.
Dr Casanova said mining on the Moon involved the resources themselves, which could potentially be used to support ships travelling between Earth and Mars, the creation of new technology and learning how to live away from Earth.
"Being able to develop and operate in an environment that, although not completely analogous to Mars, has many similar constraints in terms of power, communications, living in an atmosphere-free environment without breathable oxygen," she said.
Dr Casanova said the Moon would be a testing ground before humans progressed to Mars.
Legal and sovereignty issues
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967, developed by the United Nations and signed by the US, Russia and the UK, has nine main principles, including that the Moon be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.
It also states that outer space not be "subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means".
There is also a clause stipulating that all areas of the Moon should be accessible to everyone.
The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 says all areas of the Moon should be accessible to everyone. (NASA)
But Dr Gorman said there were untested areas of ambiguity — for example, exclusion zones around mining areas.
"And of course there could be commercial in-confidence operations going on because there's this huge emphasis now on private corporations and commercial operations for profit as a way to finance the science," she said.
Dr Gorman said it was unclear how mining on the Moon meshed with the Outer Space Treaty.
Unlike in Australia, where there are laws governing mineral exploration and extraction, there are no explicit laws in place regarding the Moon because no nation has sovereignty over it.
"There's a lot of Moon and there's a lot of south pole, so it would be possible for numerous nations or companies to be carrying out resource extraction and not ever overlap or come into conflict with each other," Dr Gorman said.
"But what happens if they do? And what happens if the area somebody wants to mine is also one that scientists would like to preserve for future study?"
The UN developed a Moon Treaty in 1979.
But space lawyer Gregory Radisic said only 18 countries had ratified it and none of them had actually landed on the Moon.
"If you don't have a rocket ship and you can't go there, then that's fine, you can sign anything you want, but you're not really part of the party," he said.
Mr Radisic, who is a fellow at For All Moonkind, a not-for-profit organisation that advocates for protection and the development of laws in space, explained that countries, including the US and the former USSR, agreed to a principle of non-appropriation during the 1960s.
"It is basically a legal doctrine saying no-one can own land on the Moon or any celestial body," he said.
"But then you had all these Apollo missions, where it's almost like mining was happening under the guise of scientific exploration and research, bringing back rock samples."
The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs has a working group drafting legal aspects of space resource activities, but even if countries sign up to the recommended principles, once they are finalised, they are non-binding.
The draft principles include environmental assessments before any resource extraction, avoiding adverse changes to Earth and the harmful contamination of the Moon.
But given that much of the space race is being led by tech billionaires who tend to follow the Silicon Valley ethos of "move fast and break things", it is unclear what would happen if private companies decided to ignore the draft principles, though they do put the onus on nations to take responsibility.
NASA's ISRU Pilot Excavator (IPEx) performs a simulated lunar mission in a testbed at the Kennedy Space Center. (NASA: Frank Micheaux)
"It's a fairly common opinion that the space barons or the space billionaires aren't best placed to judge the ethical issues around lunar mining," Dr Gorman said.
"When governments carry out these exercises, they are accountable to the public but private corporations are not."
Space barons and billionaires
NASA and other space agencies are outsourcing a lot of their projects to private actors, such as Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin.
Dr Gorman said she was concerned about what that could mean for the future of the Moon.
"Your average space billionaire probably doesn't give a rat's arse about future generations," she said.
"Elon Musk has set his sights on Mars, so are we going to sacrifice the Moon so that some of these space billionaires can conquer Mars in that old sort of colonialist way?"
In January, NASA and the US Department of Energy announced a renewed commitment to support the research and development of a nuclear fission surface power system for use on the Moon via the Artemis campaign and future missions to Mars.
Russia also plans to put a nuclear power plant on the moon in the next decade in order to supply its lunar space program and a joint Russian–Chinese research station.
International rules ban putting nuclear weapons in space but there are no bans on nuclear energy sources.
Mr Radisic said it was important to consider what impacts construction on the Moon might have back on Earth.
"Imagine you see a new moon and all of a sudden there's a light flickering back at you," he said.
"Even just from that cultural perspective, how does that change every child's perspective of outer space once that starts happening?
"Same with heritage — what if we land a craft and all of a sudden Neil Armstrong's first bootprint on the Moon is wiped away?
"How devastating would that be for humanity? Just so we can have a power source?"
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