After 50-year hiatus, international space mining treaties are on the table

A dozen nations have signed on Artemis Accords, a NASA initiative that focuses on peaceful use of astronomical objects

After a 50-year hiatus, international treaties about space exploration and exploitation are on the table. The Artemis Accords are an initiative by the US to hash out new agreements. Artemis is the code name for NASA’s mission to put humans on the Moon again in 2024.

The last major international agreements were the Outer Space Treaty (OST), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1967, followed by the Registration Convention of 1976. The OST articulated highfalutin principles and said little concrete. The Registration Convention asked signatories to furnish orbital details of manmade objects to prevent space collisions.

The world has changed a lot since 1967 when there were effectively only two space-going nations. Now, along with the US and Russia (the successor state to the USSR), the European Space Agency (ESA) and France on its own have a presence. China is building its own space station and has sent successful missions to Mars, and the Moon, apart from demonstrating its ability to destroy satellites. Russia and China intend to put up a permanent joint lunar station. Japanese missions have visited comets. And there’s India’s ISRO apart from the UAE’s space missions supported by Japan.

In addition to this list of high-flying nations, private sector corporations are building space-going capabilities. This includes boutique outfits in India and Israel, as well as big guns like SpaceX, Virgin and Blue Origin.

Space exploration led to massive advances in technological capabilities. Space-oriented research has revolutionised communications, entertainment, medicine, earth sciences, weather prediction, renewable energy, computerisation, robotics, etc.

The new wave of explorers is looking to do more ambitious things. Elon Musk of SpaceX wants to establish permanent human colonies on the Moon and Mars. Richard Branson of Virgin and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin want to sign tourists up for zero-gravity trips.

There are science fiction concepts for establishing factories and fuel depots at Lagrange points. Lagrange points are the places where the gravities of the Earth and Moon cancel out; objects left there float in place indefinitely without energy expenditure. Scientists have also suggested creating a digital library of genomes of all species stored up in space as a way of conserving biogenetic information.

Everyone would like to figure out ways to locate and mine minerals and chemicals, which are scarce on Earth while being abundantly available elsewhere in the solar system. Helium isotopes, for example, are believed to be easily available on the Moon. The asteroids and comets could contain massive amounts of industrial metals, as well as odd amino acid combinations that are not found on Earth. Any colony on Mars would have to find water and develop ways to generate oxygen by cracking atmospheric carbon dioxide perhaps.

So what do the Artemis Accords suggest? They build on the space laws outlined by the OST and focus on civil exploration and peaceful use of the Moon, Mars and other astronomical objects. Some 12 nations have signed on so far including the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Luxembourg, Italy, UK, UAE, the Ukraine, Brazil, South Korea and New Zealand.

It is non-binding. But as in the OST, the concept of peaceful cooperation and sharing of scientific data is reiterated. Crucially, the Accords call for interoperability and international standards for space gear and for better registration of manmade objects. There’s a commitment to mitigate space debris and limit the generation of new, harmful space debris.

The Accords also include an agreement that the extraction and utilisation of space resources should comply with the OST and be safe and sustainable. National appropriation of space resources is prohibited by the OST. The signatories to the Accords will try to develop international practices and rules on this subject.

So far, so good, and signing on with the Accords is mandatory for participation in the Artemis Mission. This is the big carrot in the deal. NASA dwarfs all the other space agencies in size and scope of what it does. There could be big commercial payoffs for aerospace industries in the signatories, since they become part of a global supply chain. Access to scientific data from all over will also be beneficial.

India (along with Russia and China) has not signed the Accords. One reason could be that these gloss over certain aspects of space mining. Most US lawyers would interpret the Accords as allowing for private sector mining, etc. Implicitly too, NASA becomes a sort of gatekeeper to space and the flow of data and knowledge would be two-way.

India’s space programme has links with Russia (for cosmonaut training) and the Ukraine (cryogenic engine technology) though it has worked with NASA on the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions. But India has in principle opened aerospace to private industry and signing on could be greatly beneficial.