NASA announced that it is looking for private companies to travel to the moon, collect dust and rocks from the surface and bring them back to Earth.
The US space agency then purchased 50 to 500 grams of lunar samples at prices ranging from $ 15,000 to $ 25,000.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced Thursday that collecting lunar material will be part of a technology development program that will help astronauts “live off the earth” for future crewed missions to the Moon or elsewhere.
Bridenstine wrote that the agency “Buys lunar soil from a commercial supplier. It’s time to provide regulatory confidence in the extraction and trade of space resources. ”
The collection is part of NASA Artemis The lunar exploration program, launched last year, envisions the landing of American astronauts, including the first woman and the next man, on the moon by 2024.
The agency indicated that long-distance missions, such as to Mars, will require the use of locally mined resources.
“We will use what we have learned on and around the moon to next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars, Bridenstine wrote.
Blog Bridenstein said the effort would match 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which states that no country can make sovereign claims to the moon or other celestial bodies in the same way as the Antarctic continent is closed to territorial conquests.
NASA in May provided the legal framework this will determine the behavior of countries and companies in space and on the moon. The legal framework, known as the Artemis Accord, includes the creation of “safety zones” around areas where mining and exploration will take place on the lunar surface.
NASA’s chief administrator also reported Forum The Safe World Foundation believes that the policies governing the extraction of celestial bodies will be much the same as those currently in place for the oceans.
“We really believe we can harvest and use the resources of the moon, just like we can harvest and use tuna in the ocean,” he said, not to mention the overfishing and pollution that is rapidly destroying fish stocks in many regions.
However, unlike fisheries, participating celestial mining companies will need to provide images of the material and the location from which it was extracted.
NASA already has a separate program under contract with companies to launch scientific experiments and cargo to the moon before a human landing. These include Astrobotic, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada Corp, and Lockheed Martin.
Bridenstine said he expects some of them may also be interested in mining on the moon.
Casey Dreyer, Chief Advocate and Senior Advisor for Space Policy at the Planetary Society, tweeted that the importance of NASA’s announcement is “not so much a financial incentive (which is tiny), but setting a legal precedent for private companies to collect and sell celestial materials (with the explicit blessing of NASA / US government).”
• This article was amended on September 11, 2020. The reference to “manned missions” was supposed to be a “manned” mission in accordance with our gender-neutral approach and NASA’s own terminology.
