By Dr Ajey Lele,
Moon is in the news. Right now, there are two important projects below discussion, which are anticipated to drive the international Moon agenda for coming decades. One such project is NASA’s Artemis Accords and the other is the China-Russia proposal to create a Lunar Research Station. Both these projects have some commonalities and some variations. Both these projects are in search of international participation. It seems that NASA has currently taken a lead and there are twelve states who have come to be a element of this project. They are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. The International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) by China and Russia have no takers but.
NASA’s Artemis programme is about returning humans to the Moon, and going beyond. As a very first step, they want the very first girls to land on the Moon surface by 2024. China and Russia are keen to create a Lunar Research Station, either on the Moon’s surface or in lunar orbit. The concept is to create this station as a scientific base with the capability for conducting extended-term autonomous operations. There would be massive expenses involved for operating such projects and that is one of the primary motives why these states are keen to take forward their personal Moon agenda as collaborative projects with international participation. Obviously, there is a geopolitical dimension of such programmes as well.
Presently, it seems that for the last handful of years, multilateralism is receiving considerably in focus, rather it would not be inappropriate to say that multilateralism has emerged as a new international fad. Some such groups have been shaped to give a message to the adversaries, though in some groups adversaries have discovered themselves working with each other! Space is emerging as an essential agenda for such groups. Lobbies are discovered working overtime to sell the concepts like the Artemis programme. Now, the query in front of India is, which group India ought to join. Obviously, given that China is element of ILRS, there are no takers for this group. Hence, Artemis programme is receiving projected as the greatest readily available selection.
Now the query is, just due to the fact important powers have identified Moon as an agenda for the future (their), ought to India get carried away and blindly join them given that ‘India should not miss the (so-called) bus’ or ought to India very first determine about its location and then take the acceptable bus?
In future, ‘space resources mining’ is anticipated to emerge as one of the most essential concerns of international contention. The mining of asteroids (and other planets) is about controlling a vast supply of wealth consisting of uncommon earth components and valuable metals. There is an asteroid named 16 Psyche, which is recognized to have gold and other minerals worth $700 quintillion (a quantity equal to 1 followed by 18 zeros). The Moon has abundant deposits of Helium-3, though Earth has just about none. This isotope could provide safer nuclear power in a fusion reactor. Also, it is a climate friendly power supply, given that it is not radioactive and would not create harmful waste items. As per some predictions, a massive cargo aircraft load of Helium-3 could cater for the international power desires for about ten years.
On November 25, 2015, the then US President had signed the US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. This act encompasses 4 titles and the fourth title is about the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization. As per this act, the US agencies (private players) have industrial home rights in sources extracted from further-terrestrial bodies by them. Two other signatories to Artemis Accords, Luxembourg and the UAE, have also a national legal architecture in location, which permits their space sector to undertake the extraction of minerals from further-terrestrial bodies. Such regulations are in conflict with Article II of the Outer Space Treaty (OST), which the US and lots of nations are signatories. More so, all this is contradictory to the notion that Moon and other celestial bodies are the Common Heritage to Mankind (CHM). All this indicates that there is a necessity for getting a globally accepted mechanism on the management of space sources.
The US and China are far ahead of India in the domain of Moon excavation. It is a reality that India can’t match them. It has been observed for all these years that nations like the US think more in the ‘sale’ of technologies than the ‘transfer’ of technologies. Hence, from a technologies point of view India is unlikely to acquire considerably by joining any US Moon projects. More importantly a state like India, which has important space accomplishments ought to join such programmes from the position of strength. Unfortunately, India’s Moon programme has not made satisfactory progress. It began with a bang by discovering water on the Moon for the duration of 2008, nonetheless subsequent advancement has been incredibly slow. India desires to very first consolidate its personal Moon agenda.
Presently, there is no dying want for India to join any multilateral mega project like Artemis Accords. First, there is a necessity to have clarity on concerns like ownership of Space Resources, just before India joins any international Moon bandwagon. Today, lots of of India’s personal space projects have been delayed owing Covid-19 crisis and there is a want to total them very first. It is essential to preserve focus on priorities rather than unnecessarily receiving into any Moon Trap.
(The author is Senior Fellow, MP-IDSA, New Delhi. He can be reached at: [email protected] Views expressed are individual and do not reflect the official position or policy of TheSpuzz Online.)