What we do with the Moon will transform it forever

The Moon is alone.

It is unique in the known cosmos:

a solitary rock a quarter of the width of its host planet, the only place where life has been found.

And the Moon is alone: ​​it is a sun-baked, cratered wasteland, home to little except what we carry, both in our minds and in our spaceships.

However, this is it is about to change.

In the next few weeks, a rocket is expected to leave Earth’s atmosphere and send up a spacecraft called Nova-C at full speed towards the south pole of the Moon.

If all goes as planned, the Nova-C, a creation of the private company Intuitive machines As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Cargo Services program, it will land on the Moon about seven days later and bring with it an array of scientific instruments.

It will also carry a collection of short stories stored on microfiche disks, several cameras and a series of small ones sculptures by the artist Jeff Koons who will be locked in a cube and will remain on the Moon forever.

The launch scheduled for February will come shortly after another company’s failed Moon landing attempt.

Failures

He Pilgrimmade by Astrobotic technology Under another Commercial Lunar Cargo Services contract, it successfully flew into space on January 8, but had to abort its mission due to a fuel leak.

It wasn’t the first private mission to land on the Moon, but Nova-C could be, as could the next one and many others.

While this prediction seems like an obligatory step for humanity’s cosmic ambitions, it also predicts a daunting future in which the Moon becomes fertile ground for human enterprise. unregulated which will transform it irreversibly.

Humans have not touched the Moon since the end of the show Apollo in 1972 and robots do so only occasionally thanks to expensive government-funded ventures that often fail.

However, what will likely happen in February is new.

For the first time, the Private capital will occupy the Moon, including small startups whose goals transcend science and exploration, with the launch of landers and capsules.

These missions continue to have a heavy subsidy of NASA and other space agencies seeking permanent return to the Moon, most through the program Artemis of NASA, which now aims to land the first female astronaut on the Moon in 2026.

The Commercial Lunar Cargo Services program, as part of Artemis, encourages private companies to build landers and even exploration vehicles that NASA can pay to use, in contrast to the traditional approach of equipment produced at NASA.

This means that even if they carry scientific experiments conducted with government sponsorship, the new landers will be private, commercially funded creations that can choose to add other non-scientific payloads purchased from other customers.

The freedom to choose any load could generate controversy.

The Nova-C will use heat-reflective coatings based on the brand’s designs. Columbia sportswear; A company website shows the concept art of the Columbia logo prominently displayed on the spacecraft while it sits on the lunar surface.

The failed Peregrine lander carried small amounts of rthese cremated humans.

In 2019, an Israeli lander carried a few thousand dehydrated tardigrades, microscopic creatures that can survive in the vacuum of space.

It’s unclear what happened to them when the lander crashed, but the attempt has raised new concerns about the movement of biological materials onto the Moon.

Future launches will attempt to send more cremated human remains to the Moon, as well as time capsules, messages and other materials that are sure to raise objections.

Changes

This new era of lunar missions will likely change humanity’s relationship with the Moon.

Before that happens, we owe ourselves – and the Moon itself – a more thoughtful consideration of what our planet’s only natural satellite represents.

Everything we do with it will last forever.

We have a huge responsibility for the future of the Moon and that of all those who live near it.

Earth’s inert and ghostly companion world guides our existence.

Protect our planet from climate chaos by moderating the Earth’s axis.

It favored the evolution of complex life. Thanks to its tide, the Moon brought vertebrate animals to earth.

Early humans used it to mark time, create calendars, and forge early civilizations; Then we use it to consolidate power, develop religion, and invent philosophy and science.

In conclusion, it has played a fundamental role in our biological and cultural evolution and is a fundamental element in everything from the trenches of war to our most idealistic dreams.

Before the end of this decade, if you have a powerful enough telescope, you may see evidence of human construction or even settlement on the Moon.

In May 2023, accounting firm PwC estimated that the global space industry was worth $469 billion and would surpass $1 trillion by 2030, as countries and companies increasingly use satellites for manufacturing, Power generation, energy and data.

NASA estimates show that spending on lunar exploration programs supported more than $20 billion in economic output in the United States in 2022.

The agency has already awarded billions of dollars in contracts to private companies, including established giants like Lockheed Martin, new entrants with multibillion-dollar backing like SpaceX and Blue Origin, combative startups like lander makers Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, and the research on nuclear energy Zenone Potenza.

“We are at an inflection point where ideas previously confined to the pages of science fiction represent compelling investment opportunities,” the PwC report states.

Some of these companies will provide landing services to space agencies, universities or private research companies; others will help provide power, guidance or mission planning services to other lunar journeys, with the goal of creating a self-sustaining lunar economy.

After learning about the cremation service’s plans Celestis Memorial Space Flight of sending human ashes to the Moon aboard Peregrine, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren wrote to NASA Administrator on December 21,

Bill Nelson and other officials to ask them to delay the launch. The Navajo people revere the Moon as an object of spiritual importance.

“The act of depositing human remains and other materials on the Moon, which elsewhere might be perceived as waste, amounts to desecrating this sacred space,” Nygren wrote.

The Navajo President’s protest offers an example of how using the Moon, even for the most well-intentioned purposes, requires a collaborative and deliberate approach.

The Moon belongs to everyone, that is, it does not belong to anyone; Anyone’s use of the Moon requires everyone’s consideration.

Plans

Moon landings planned for 2024 and 2025 under the Commercial Lunar Cargo Services program include a robot that searches for water, a navigation system that works like a GPS device, instruments for probing the Moon’s interior, and sample containers who will collect moles of soil.

These private landers will join a flotilla of government rovers, landers and scientific instruments launched by the United States, China, Russia and India.

In August, the Indian space agency successfully landed a new rover on the Moon, becoming the fourth country to do so.

On Friday, after repeated failed attempts, Japan became the fifth country in the world to successfully land a spacecraft on the Moon.

However, space remains difficult, as demonstrated by the recent moon landing failures of Russia and the Israeli company SpaceIL, which transported tardigrades in 2019.

Although the Moon looms in our sky most nights and days, it is about 400,000 kilometers away.

It’s one thing to launch rockets from Earth and another is to reach the Moon.

Since 2020, NASA representatives have attempted to create a more cooperative path to the Moon through the agency’s Artemis Accords, a nonbinding framework that confirms the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and calls on signatories to improve collaboration between nations agreeing on international standards for equipment, helping each other in emergencies, sharing scientific data, and protecting Apollo landing sites.

However, the agreements also leave plenty of room for the extraction and use of mined “resources,” which could include moon dust, water, rare earth elements, or other materials.

There is value in being explorers, scientists on the Moon, maybe even gold miners who want to help people on Earth.

However, man tends to transmute exploration into extraction and our intentions on the Moon seem to follow the same path.

The Moon won’t be alone for long.

However he is and will always remain silent.

It is not the array of thundering storms, crashing waves, birdsong or hymns.

We must be their voice.

Soon we will change its surface, and our relationship with it, forever.

At the very least, we owe the Moon a thorough debate about why and how we will do this.

c.2024 The New York Times Company