Nations shooting for the moon in search for resources
India, Japan and the US are hoping riches lie beneath the lunar surface.
As the Vikram lander softly touched down on the moon, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi allowed himself a moment of generosity. “India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone,” he beamed. “This success belongs to all of humanity.”
The symbolism, however, told a different story: this was India’s victory. As Modi waved a tiny saffron, white and green flag, scientists in Bangalore cheered “Jai Hind” (“long live India”). Schoolchildren were lined up to tell broadcasters how proud they were to be Indian.
The timing of the landing last month could not have been better for Modi. His address was broadcast from Johannesburg, where he was at the BRICS summit of emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – only days after Russia’s latest excursion to the moon ended in an embarrassing crash landing.
India is the fourth country to complete a controlled landing on the moon successfully, following the US, the Soviet Union and China. But a flurry of other missions is hot on their heels.
“The moon has become a destination again,” says Neil Bowles, professor of planetary science at Oxford University. “It is seen as a political target. But it’s also a very interesting scientific target in its own right. And of course it could become a staging place for other places in the solar system later on.”
Japan is expected to launch its own mission, after a planned launch last month was suspended because of high winds.
Two private American companies – Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines – plan to blast off this year with spacecraft partly funded by NASA. These are all robotic missions, but astronauts will soon follow.
The Apollo 17 mission in 1972 was the last time humans stepped on the moon. It has been nearly 20 years since George W. Bush announced the US would return to “gain a new foothold”.
But in November, four astronauts will launch from NASA’s famous Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, bound for lunar orbit. The Artemis II mission will fly around the moon, carrying the first humans to leave low-Earth orbit in five decades.
In 2025, Artemis III will finally take humans to the surface, including the first woman to set foot on the moon. NASA’s renewed ambitions don’t stop there. Plans are in place for a “lunar gateway” – a space station from which astronauts can be shuttled to the surface. Eventually the agency wants permanent bases on the moon where scientists and geologists can work, and staging posts from which missions can be launched to Mars and beyond. All of that takes resources. And rather than haul everything needed to build and run a base from Earth, scientists want to use materials found on the moon.
That starts with water. If they can find water on the moon it could be used for drinking, and split into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to make rocket fuel.
The moon, however, is a desert. At its equator, temperatures reach 130C and water instantly evaporates.
But scientists hope frozen reservoirs may lie deep in craters at the poles, where the oblique angle of the sun’s rays means they are in permanent darkness. “In these shadowed regions, temperatures can be down to minus 170C or so,” Bowles says. “At these temperatures water ice is stable for billions of years.”
The race is on to find – and potentially claim – these deposits. It is far from clear who would own them. The US has urged other nations to sign its “Artemis accords”, which say that extraction of space resources “does not inherently constitute national appropriation”. But the agreement is voluntary; China and Russia have not signed up and NASA is publicly concerned China might try to claim territory.
The jostling for position now focuses on the poles. India’s mission was the first to land in the south polar region. The US missions this year are headed south too, as is Artemis III.
Katherine Joy, professor of lunar and planetary science at Manchester University, last Tuesday was announced as a member of the Artemis III geology team, tasked with helping to plan NASA’s search for water and minerals.
When astronauts return to the moon in 2025, Joy is expected to be at mission control in Houston, Texas, directing their efforts.
“We really don’t know what is buried under the surface soil,” she says. “The only way we are going to test this is by getting into these craters.”
The deposits they find will be scientifically invaluable – carrying the signature of particles that have been bombarding the moon, and our planet, for millennia.
“We are still not completely sure how the moon got there,” says Mike Lockwood, professor of space environment physics at Reading University. “The more mineral and isotopic information from the moon, the more we will be able to differentiate between the theories.”
Landing on the moon is cheaper than ever: the Indian mission has cost a mere £58m ($144m).
But it remains no easy task. Russia’s Luna-25 crashed on the surface recently and India’s previous attempt, in 2019, also failed.
So with today’s modern technology, when robotic ships can go to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and beyond, do humans really need to be exposed to the risk of going back to the moon?
The inspirational impact of seeing these men and women step out in space should not be dismissed, says Chris Scott, professor of space and atmospheric physics at Britain’s Reading University. “The Apollo missions were certainly the reason I studied space science. I assumed we would all be living on the moon when I grew up.”
Now a new generation looks set to be inspired.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout