The United States space agency NASA will now buy rocks, dirt and other lunar materials from companies as it launched steps to pay such companies that can mine resources on the moon. Analysts see this move by NASA as a strategy to encourage private companies to extract the most desirable off-world resources for its use.
This latest plan of NASA will not be in violation of a 1967 treaty that mandates that celestial bodies and space cannot be included in the national claims of ownership, wrote NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a blog post accompanying the announcement of the space agency.
This new plan of NASA is targeted at companies that have made plans for sending robots to mine lunar resources and is a part of the broader aim of the NASA to set what Bridenstine called “norms of behavior” in space as well as allowing private companies to conduct private mining on the moon o that it would be possible to make future astronaut missions sustainable.
NASA’s view bout the ownership of the mined resources is that those belong to the company that mines them and that such materials would become “the sole property of NASA” after the same are purchased by it.
The Artemis program of NASA has been touted by US president Donald Trump’s administration as a means of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024. Such missions of sending man to moon once again are a precursor to a future first human voyage to Mars according to NASA.
“The bottom line is we are going to buy some lunar soil for the purpose of it demonstrating that it can be done,” Bridenstine said during an event hosted by the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organization.
More types of resources such as ice and other materials that may be discovered on the moon would eventually be bought by NASA, Bridenstine said.
Global debate of how people will live and work on the moon was set rolling in Mt by NASA with it releasing the main doctrines for what the space agency hopes will become an international pact for moon exploration called the Artemis Accords. Under this new doctrine, those companies that conduct excavation on the moon will actually own the resources and this is considered to one of the crucial elements that would allow NASA contractors to convert the moon’s water ice for rocket fuel or mine lunar minerals for building of landing pads.
Limited amounts of lunar resources were offered to be purchased by NASA, according to the latest announcement of the space agency on Thursday. NASA also asked interested companies to submit offer proposals for the same. According to those contracts, which will likely have different terms and conditions, lunar rocks or dirt will be collected by a company mining them on the moon and sell them to NASA without the need to bring back such resources to Earth.
“This is one small step for space resources, but a giant leap for policy and precedent,” Mike Gold, NASA’s chief of international relations, said. “They are paying the company to sell them a rock that the company owns. That’s the product,” Joanne Gabrynowicz, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, said in an interview. “A company has to decide for itself if it’s worth taking the financial and technological risk to do this to sell a rock.”
(Source:www.hindustantimes.com)
This latest plan of NASA will not be in violation of a 1967 treaty that mandates that celestial bodies and space cannot be included in the national claims of ownership, wrote NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a blog post accompanying the announcement of the space agency.
This new plan of NASA is targeted at companies that have made plans for sending robots to mine lunar resources and is a part of the broader aim of the NASA to set what Bridenstine called “norms of behavior” in space as well as allowing private companies to conduct private mining on the moon o that it would be possible to make future astronaut missions sustainable.
NASA’s view bout the ownership of the mined resources is that those belong to the company that mines them and that such materials would become “the sole property of NASA” after the same are purchased by it.
The Artemis program of NASA has been touted by US president Donald Trump’s administration as a means of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2024. Such missions of sending man to moon once again are a precursor to a future first human voyage to Mars according to NASA.
“The bottom line is we are going to buy some lunar soil for the purpose of it demonstrating that it can be done,” Bridenstine said during an event hosted by the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organization.
More types of resources such as ice and other materials that may be discovered on the moon would eventually be bought by NASA, Bridenstine said.
Global debate of how people will live and work on the moon was set rolling in Mt by NASA with it releasing the main doctrines for what the space agency hopes will become an international pact for moon exploration called the Artemis Accords. Under this new doctrine, those companies that conduct excavation on the moon will actually own the resources and this is considered to one of the crucial elements that would allow NASA contractors to convert the moon’s water ice for rocket fuel or mine lunar minerals for building of landing pads.
Limited amounts of lunar resources were offered to be purchased by NASA, according to the latest announcement of the space agency on Thursday. NASA also asked interested companies to submit offer proposals for the same. According to those contracts, which will likely have different terms and conditions, lunar rocks or dirt will be collected by a company mining them on the moon and sell them to NASA without the need to bring back such resources to Earth.
“This is one small step for space resources, but a giant leap for policy and precedent,” Mike Gold, NASA’s chief of international relations, said. “They are paying the company to sell them a rock that the company owns. That’s the product,” Joanne Gabrynowicz, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, said in an interview. “A company has to decide for itself if it’s worth taking the financial and technological risk to do this to sell a rock.”
(Source:www.hindustantimes.com)
