Questions of equality in space were again highlighted after the American company Moon Express on Friday, January 13, announced that it had all the necessary resources to land its lunar rover on the surface of a natural satellite of the Earth.
Representatives of the company assure that the operation will be carried out as part of a project that brings together several other teams competing for the Lunar X Prize from Google, a grand, the main goal of which is to help private space companies in the exploration of the moon. Thus, the scenario of the commercial exploitation of the Moon and other celestial objects becomes more realistic, and the international discussion of the legal consequences of such actions becomes a cornerstone.
Google promises to pay $ 20 million to the first company to accomplish three tasks: land a spacecraft on the moon, travel 500 meters on its surface, and transmit high-definition video back to Earth. At the same time, the participant who took second place in the competition will receive $ 5 million. The main difficulty is that the mission must be completed by the end of 2017, taking into account exclusively private funding.
One of the five bidders is Moon Express, which in August 2016 became the first privately-owned company to receive permission from the US government to conduct business outside of Earth orbit. According to a statement by Bob Richards, CEO and co-founder of the company, Moon Express today has all the resources it needs to become the winners of this competition. What's more, the company has signed a contract with the American aerospace corporation Rocket Lab, which plans to begin testing launches earlier this year.
Notably, Moon Express's ambitions extend beyond Google's prize money. If their mission goes according to plan, the MX-1 spacecraft will carry a payload that is not on the list of hardware required to meet Google's requirements.
“We envision long-term operations on the moon and sending valuable resources, metals and rocks from the satellite to Earth,” co-founder and chairman Naveen Jain of the company said in a statement.
However, as the number of such statements grows, the resonance in society is also maturing – is the US government authorized to approve such missions on its own and who actually owns space? According to the UN, everyone and no one. The 1966 Space Treaty contains the fundamental principles that govern the extraterrestrial activities of states. One of the main ones is the ban on the use of weapons in space and the implementation of activities in space for the benefit of all mankind.
But the US government has a slightly different point of view and in 2015 independently passed a law on the competitiveness of commercial space launches with the aim of developing private companies such as Moon Express, Planetary Resources, SpaceX and several other private space enterprises. The law gives the right to mine minerals on the Moon and asteroids, giving companies the right to own and sell resources extracted from space objects, but not the objects themselves. Many planetary scientists were outraged and started talking about the fact that such an approach contradicts not only the spirit, but also the letter of the Outer Space Treaty.
Experts are confident that as more private companies become involved in the struggle for outer space, the demand for a more reliable legal framework will grow. In anticipation of this, several universities are already offering programs in space law. In the meantime, Moon Express and its competitors in the X Prize continue the space race, create modern means of alien exploration and development.
“Now we have our hands free, and we can set the sail of our ship on the eighth continent of the Earth called the Moon in order to gain new knowledge and resources to expand the economic sphere for the benefit of all mankind,” concluded Richards.
