School children’s watch the live telecast of the soft landing process of Chandrayaan 3 on the surface of South pole of moon, as seen at a school in Kolkata, India, on Aug. 23, 2023. (Photo by Debarchan Chatterjee/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — India’s historic lunar landing Wednesday signaled the next step in a new era of multilateral space exploration, and served to highlight the progress yet to be made by international bodies in laying out the rules of the extraterrestrial road.
With the successful soft landing of the Chandrayaan-3, India became the fourth nation to land on the Moon and the first country to do so near to the lunar south pole. That feat came only three days after Russia’s attempt to do the same ended in a fiery crash, and in advance of planned US and Chinese missions to put astronauts on the lunar surface by by the end of next year and the end of the decade, respectively.
Each of these missions have the same brass ring in mind: opening the door to the exploitation of lunar orbits and resources, such the south pole’s water ice and stashes of specialty metals underneath the dusty regolith, for economic and potentially even strategic gain.
In the US, a host of hawkish voices over the past few years have been upping the volume about the threat posed by China’s cislunar ambitions. Even NASA administrator Bill Nelson has expressed concerns that Beijing might try claim resource-rich lunar real estate as its own territory, and block US access.
Most recently, a paper published Monday [PDF] by the National Security Space Association (NSSA), a Space Force advocacy group, asserts that Beijing ultimately intends to establish the Moon as an economic and military outpost from which to secure its role as the premier power on Earth — and suggesting that the US bolster its military space capabilities to counter Chinese plans.
“For example, the PRC could establish an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in cislunar space, declare a Space Defense Identification Zone (SDIZ) and ‘keep out’ zones to protect it, conduct in-situ resource utilization to support operations on the lunar surface, and extract valuable resources such as rare Earth materials and water on the Moon to increase its international competitiveness, wealth, and military power,” the paper, “Strategic Implications of China’s Cislunar Space Activities,” argues.
“China might also attempt to enforce such astropolitical claims by purposefully interfering with the operations of U.S. and other nations’ spacecraft in cislunar space” using a variety of counterspace weapons it is already pursuing, the paper said. “China’s ability to deny freedom of action at strategic chokepoints and along the space lines of communication would provide it a formidable advantage from which to influence the course and outcome of conflict on Earth and in space.”
Slow Going On Rules Of The Road
Meanwhile, on the international stage, there is a “flurry” of efforts surrounding how to establish rules for peaceful access to and exploitation of space resources, Jessica West, of Canada’s Project Ploughshares Project, told Breaking Defense.
“There is a lot of human activity planned for the Moon. India made history by achieving the first soft landing on the Moon’s south pole. More than 100 lunar missions are planned for this decade alone, including many that are commercial. And the international Artemis missions intends to build a lunar gateway and a base at the lunar south pole,” she explained.
“This is why there is value in investing in governance,” West added. “Clearly additional rules are needed to help coordinate activities and navigate new questions.”
She noted that rule-setting efforts include ongoing Biden administration work to expand participation in the Artemis Accords, a set of voluntary best practices for human exploration of space, as well as early-stage discussions at the United Nations to figure out how current laws apply to activities like lunar and asteroid mining, and what, if any new rules are needed.
Up to now, however, there isn’t widespread international agreement about where the guardrails should be set.
While the Artemis Accords now have 28 national signatories, with India among the most recent, neither Russia or China have joined.
And at the moment, the wider UN effort under the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) is struggling just to lift off.
The COPUOS Legal Subcommittee in 2021 voted [PDF] to establish the Working Group on the Legal Aspects of Space Resource Activities. The group was given a five-year mandate and its work commenced last spring. But so far, the group hasn’t even been able to set the participation guidelines for a conference next year on the issue that was one of the few solid actions approved in its mandate.
“The sticking point is what type of experts will be invited, and whether the chairs get to choose them, or whether they merely get to suggest them, and member states get final say on who gets to speak,” Secure World Foundation legal advisor Christopher Johnson told Breaking Defense.
The hope, he added is that the “whole kerfuffle” can be broken at an informal working group meeting next month.
The deep geopolitical differences over the issue were on display the most recent full meeting of COPUOS in Vienna, held May 31 to June 9 [PDF], according to meeting documents and observers.
Essentially, the US argued [PDF] that no new legally instruments are necessary, and that disputes can be avoided by the use of voluntary agreements such as the Artemis Accords. A group led by China and Russia, took the opposite view [PDF], asserting that not only is a new treaty required, but also new international body to administer it, along the lines of the International Telecommunication Union that governs countries use of the radio frequency spectrum.
A number of developing nations fretted that the nascent race for space resources will end up in a neo-colonial land grab by the developed world led by private sector firms, leaving them in the economic dust. And Australia [PDF] and a handful of other countries fell somewhere in the middle, expressing interest in new normative accords and possibly legal measures but taking care not to take sides.
The UN working group’s next formal round of meetings will be in tandem with the Legal Subcommittee’s annual meeting, tentatively set for April 15 to 26 April 2024.
“Governance takes time, but we can get there,” West summed up.