Artemis and the Moon Part 2
Why are we returning to the Moon?
Space is just another domain in which geopolitics play out. It has been pointed out to me that we shouldn’t talk about “geopolitics” in space, since space is literally outside the geosphere. But I’m not a fan of fancy names like “astropolitics”. It suggests something new or different is taking place, and it’s not. “Cyberpolitics” has become its own sub-genre of political studies and international relations, but again, it’s just the same stuff playing out in another technological domain.
These fancy names suggest what’s happening out there and up above is out of our hands, too complex to understand, for specialists only. When in fact, it is part of the world we are in. It’s the same political and commercial goings on, being expressed in a place we already use and inhabit with our technologies.
The cyber and space domains are part of our terrestrial existence, dear space citizens. What’s happening in space is therefore something we shouldn’t be divested from, but should be very much more aware of and involved in, because what happens in the next few years matters to us, and matters for our children, and matters for their children, and so on and so on.
A 21st century race to the Moon is on, and you need to know about it and understand what the race is really about. I don’t mean you should add this to the things that keep you up at night and feel helpless about. I mean it’s something to be aware of, and to include in how we think about what the rest of this century should look like, and what part we want to play in that. Add it to the list of things you are tracking in international news, global affairs, political and economic trends, and technological advances. Add it to your definition of geopolitics and daily business. Because it is that real, that imminent, and that important.
Countries and commercial entities are working hard to return to the Moon in the next three to five years. As I alluded to in last week’s newsletter, unlike the space race of the 1960s, this time it’s not about footprints or planting flags, it’s about long-term presence and — importantly — about resources. Why exactly do we want lunar resources, and what does it mean for politics and power in the 21st century? Should we be worried?
OK, to be honest I am, just a bit.
What can the space citizen do about it? That’s the challenge.
(Heads up, this is another long-ish newsletter in your letterbox! I’m grateful for the feedback so far that adding my voiceover is useful, so I’ll be continuing to do this for all my longer pieces.)
A race with a political finish line
In the 20th century, the “space race” between the Soviets and the U.S. had a very clear finish line, declared in 1961 by U.S. President Kennedy: a race to land on the Moon. The first to get there would be a winner in a major challenge of the Cold War, demonstrating superior technology, superior economy, and ultimately, superior ideology.
To be sure, the Soviets were winning every milestone along the way: the first satellite and the first animal in orbit in 1957 (Laika the dog was launched into orbit on Sputnik 2, just one month after Sputnik 1), the first lunar probe in 1959.
In 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space for 108 minutes (this is celebrated globally on Yuri’s Night every April 12th), and just two years later Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, with an astounding three days in orbit.
(Side note, it would take more than 20 years before an American woman astronaut was allowed to follow in Tereshkova’s footsteps, with Sally Ride’s 1985 mission. But in the mean time the Soviets had sent another woman to space in 1982, cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya. I’ve written about the challenges faced by women astronauts in my article “The Province of all [Hu]Mankind: A Feminist Analysis of Space Law”)
The first space walk was by cosmonaut Alexei Leonov in 1965. And the first lunar robotic landing was the Soviet’s Luna 9 in 1966.
Literally the only part of the space race the Americans won was landing humans on the Moon — but it was the part that counted most. Emerging victorious from this space race solidified the U.S. as the frontrunner in the entire Cold War. The Soviets denied until 1989 that they had been in a race with the U.S. at all, at least with respect to human spaceflight. But even if the U.S. had been in a “one nation race”, it served a key geopolitical purpose.
Global competition has continued in space, but since the 1969 Moon landing, it has not been a race as such. There is no clear finish line if we are only talking about commercial competitive edge or even dominance by certain countries or companies. It’s more a spectrum, ongoing, jostling. And reflective of geopolitical shifts on Earth: including important satellite services and space programmes led by Europe as a global regional power, India as a rising power, and by middle powers like Canada, Japan and South Korea. And including emerging space programmes by many countries in Africa and the South Pacific and Asia. But it has not been about getting to an end state.
All that changes with the new race to the Moon.
A race for real estate, resources and reign
This time, the end state may sound a little ludicrous, and it isn’t being said out loud very much, but essentially it’s about staking a claim to political, economic and technological dominance for the rest of the century, and possibly beyond.
How could mining the Moon lead to such dominance? How could it make financial sense to ship lunar resources 384,400 km back to Earth?
It doesn’t.
Although there were some start-ups claiming in the early 2000s that mining asteroids would become a multi-trillion dollar industry that could solve our heavy metal and critical mineral needs on Earth, it soon became clear there was no business case, no proof of concept. And indeed most of those companies faded out of existence once investors stopped believing their sci-fi promises.
And yet there are billions of dollars being poured into numerous international government-led missions to figure out how to mine the Moon: not to return resources to Earth, but rather to use them in-situ. In support of lunar data centres, which may well provide for computing needs on Earth. And in support of long-term human presence in space stations, and possibly on the Moon. The Moon and her orbits become the stepping stone to further space exploration, both robotic and human.
Lunar ice, and therefore water, is the gold of the Moon. And potentially Helium 3, which can be used for highly efficient nuclear fusion. There are specific sites on the Moon either thought to be, or known to be, rich in these energy resources. And robotic operations to extract these resources are likely to have large footprints, and need large safety or protection zones around them. So whoever gets there first, gets to exclude others up to distances which might mean a monopoly on those resources.
NASA’s Artemis programme is not the only one in the race. China successfully landed a robotic lunar mission in 2013, becoming the third country after the Soviets and the U.S. to do so. These Chang’e missions, named after the Chinese lunar goddess, are ongoing, with aim of human missions by 2030. China also collaborates with Russia on the International Lunar Research Station, which is open to further international collaboration with like-minded States. Meanwhile India became the fourth country to land a robotic lunar mission in August 2023, with its Chandrayaan-3 mission landing near the lunar south pole. In 2024, the Japanese Space Agency JAXA successfully landed and deployed a rover that had not been designed to survive the two-week-long lunar “night” of plummeting temperatures, but it kept waking up and sending even more data than expected.
Commercial partners are imperative for all complex space missions, including lunar, but some companies have been going it alone. Israeli company SpaceIL managed a crash landing of the Beresheet robotic landing in 2019. U.S. company Intuitive Machines became the first private company to successfully land on the Moon in February 2024, under contract to NASA, to test landing, probes and resource sample extraction. Japanese company iSpace learned a lot from a crash landing in 2024, and its current mission “Resilience” has just snapped some impressive photos of the lunar surface this week, before it aims to land on June 5th, 2025.
And also just this week, the UAE announced it will send a mission to the far side of the Moon in 2026.
Take note of these countries — including the nationalities of the commercial entities. These are all large, rising or middle powers, very clear that their ability to play in this space race has a lot to do with their roles in the rest of this century, and the next.
NASA’s Artemis programme was originally touted as “humanity’s” return to the Moon, an international, collaborative effort. Middle powers know how to make themselves irreplaceable in this. The European Space Agency’s main contributions to the programme include developing lunar satellite navigation and communications, and Canada has focused on robotics.
Artemis was also explicitly billed as bringing the first woman and the first person of colour to the Moon’s surface. But recently, those narratives have disappeared. If you go to the NASA Artemis site now, they have simply erased any mention of a diverse human crew, or a mission for humanity, and instead it states:
We’re going back to the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and inspiration for a new generation of explorers: the Artemis Generation. While maintaining American leadership in exploration, we will build a global alliance and explore deep space for the benefit of all.
With a shift back to an isolationist American policy, the cornerstone space mission reflects this administration’s ambition for being number one. Not just now. Ongoingly.
But as the list of countries above shows, they are not alone in this race.
The geo-(astro?)-political implications
Back in early 2021 NASA rover “Perseverance” beamed high resolution pictures from Mars to Earth, which were all over social media. China’s Tianwen-1 (“Questions to Heaven”) successfully entered Martian orbit at about the same time, and the United Arab Emirates sealed its role as the leading Arab space nation, by also sending a successful orbital mission to study the planet’s atmosphere. Their mission was named “Hope”.
None of [these] Mars missions are an attempt to stake territorial or sovereignty claims, out of respect for the Outer Space Treaty. But they are expressions of technological prowess, which symbolise the ideological and political pride of each of the nations who have a remote presence there. “Perseverance,” “Hope,” and “Questions to Heaven” are all missions to ensure those nations have currency in the politics of the 21st century. - (From my article “Bringing Space Age Politics Back to Earth”, in Australian Outlook, Australian Institute of International Affairs, 11 March 2021)
Space is indeed already major currency in this century’s politics, and is likely to grow in it’s share of influence.
One person who is very much a fan of the notion of “astropolitics” is former Professor of Strategy at the US Air Force War College, Everett Dolman. This chilling quote from his book “Astropolitik” says it all:
“Who controls low Earth Orbit, controls near-Earth space. Who controls near-Earth space dominates Terra. Who dominates Terra, determines the destiny of humankind.” - “Astropolitik: Classical Geopolitics in Space” p 248
This race for resource rich real estate on the Moon is not a short term sprint. It is about securing long-term political and technological domination for the rest of the century, and into the future. While the winner of the 20th century space race emerged as the unipolar power for the following decades, this time around the pole position is likely to last a lot longer. There may be an enormous advantage to whichever country secures access to the most lucrative lunar sites. Countries and associated commercial entities that get to the best mining sites first will dominate an emerging lunar economy and the politics that follow — and depending on what technologies emerge, that dominance may last an extremely long time.
What would the goddess of the hunt say about this hunt for her resources? What does the space citizen want to see emerge out of this new activity, when it comes to international leadership?
Next week: I will be delving into the competing legal frameworks, which are a further reflection of this competition. In the week after that, I will ask what role the space citizen has in all of this.
Thanks for reading (or listening)!
Really appreciate this. I agree that governance must evolve so the Moon benefits all, not just the first actors.