Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has condemned US President Donald Trump’s order signed this week, which encourages citizens to mine the moon and other celestial bodies with commercial purposes.
The government body likened the policy
to colonialism and said it “hardly sets the countries to fruitful cooperation.”
“There have already been examples in history when one country decided to start seizing territories in its interest — everyone remembers what came of it,” Roscosmos deputy general director for international cooperation, Sergey Saveliev, said in a statement.
Trump’s order classifies outer
space as a “legally and physically unique domain of human activity” instead of
a “global commons,” paving the way for mining the moon without any sort of
international treaty.
“Americans should have the right to
engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer
space,” the document states, noting that the US had never signed a 1979 agreement
known as the Moon Treaty. This agreement stipulates that any activities in
space should conform to international law.
This is not the first time the US addresses
space mining by issuing a law. In 2015, the
US Congress passed a bill explicitly allowing companies and citizens to
mine, sell and own any space material.
That piece of legislation included
a very important clause, stating that it did not grant “sovereignty or
sovereign or exclusive rights or jurisdiction over, or the ownership of, any
celestial body.”
The section ratified the Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1966 by the US, Russia, and a
number of other countries, which states that nations can’t own territory in
space.
Trump has taken a consistent
interest in asserting American power in space, forming the Space Force within
the US military last year to conduct space warfare where needed.
The country’s space agency NASA had
previously outlined
its long-term approach to lunar exploration, which includes setting up a
“base camp” on the moon’s south pole.
The US isn’t the first nor the only
nation to jump on board the lunar mining train.
Russia has been pursuing plans in
recent years to
return to the moon, potentially travelling further into outer space.
Roscosmos revealed in
2018 plans to establish a long-term base on the moon over the next two
decades, while President Vladimir Putin has vowed to
launch a mission to Mars “very soon.”
Luxembourg, one of the first countries to set its eyes on the
possibility of mining celestial bodies, created in 2018 a Space Agency (LSA) to boost exploration
and commercial utilization of resources from near Earth objects.
Unlike NASA, LSA does not carry out
research or launches. Its purpose is to accelerate collaborations between
economic project leaders of the space sector, investors and other partners.
Thanks to the emerging European
network, scientists announced last
year plans to begin extracting resources from the moon as early as
2025.
The mission, in charge of the
European Space Agency in partnership with ArianeGroup, plans to extract waste-free
nuclear energy thought to be worth trillions of dollars.
Both China and India have also floated
ideas about extracting Helium-3 from the Earth’s natural satellite. Beijing has
already landed on the moon twice in the 21st century, with more missions
to follow.
In Canada, most initiatives have
come from the private sector. Ones of the most touted was Northern
Ontario-based Deltion Innovations partnership with Moon Express, the first
American private space exploration firm to have been granted government permission to travel beyond Earth’s
orbit.
Space ventures in the works
include plans to mine asteroids, track space debris, build
the first human settlement in Mars, and billionaire Elon Musk’s
own plan for an unmanned mission to the red planet.
Geologists as well as emerging
companies, such as US-based Planetary Resources, a firm pioneering the space
mining industry, believe asteroids are packed with iron ore, nickel and
precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making
up a market valued in the trillions of dollars.