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Space is about to fill up with as many as 100 lunar missions launching in the next decade.
Far from being an empty blackness, space appears to be busier than ever, surpassing the level of interest in the Moon since the Cold War space race of the 1950s and 1960s.
Several nations and private companies are planning missions to the Moon with experts predicting that the area between the Earth and the Moon, specifically known as cislunar space, could become strategically important.
There are also concerns that as the area becomes busier, it could lead to increased competition for resources and positioning, as well as geopolitical conflicts.
Space is about to fill up with as many as 100 lunar missions launching in the next decade. Above, the companies planning to participate:
NASA’s Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with the Orion capsule attached, launches at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in November. The Artemis I mission will send the unmanned spacecraft around the moon to test the vehicle’s propulsion, navigation and power systems as a precursor to a subsequent manned mission to the lunar surface.
Both the US and China have ambitious lunar exploration programs in the works, with plans to land astronauts on the moon and build habitats and infrastructure in orbit.
“We’re already seeing this competing rhetoric between the US government and the Chinese government,” said Laura Forczyk, chief executive of Astralytical, an Atlanta-based space consulting firm. nbc.
The United States points to China and says, “We need to fund our space initiatives on the Moon and cislunar space because China is trying to get there and claim territory.” And then the Chinese politicians are saying the same thing about the United States.’
Other countries, such as South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, India and Russia, have also planned robotic missions to the Moon, while private companies from the US, Japan and Israel are also racing to the Moon.
Even private companies, like SpaceX, have plans for lunar projects, including launching a private crew on a lunar-orbiting tour flight.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) spacecraft is seen at sunset on the launch pad at Launch Complex 39A at Cape Canaveral, in December 2021.
While increased access to space brings many benefits, it also increases the potential for tensions over competing interests that could have major economic and political consequences.
“During the Cold War, the space race was about national power and prestige,” said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director and fellow at the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for nbc news. “Now, we have a better understanding of the kind of benefits that operating in cislunar space can bring to countries back home.”
Cislunar space generally refers to the area between the Earth and the Moon, including the moon’s surface and orbit.
Lunar missions and activities, including landing on the Moon, launching from the Moon, and building habitats and infrastructure on or around the Moon, along with communication and navigation satellites, would be considered to take place in cislunar space .
In November, the White House released its own strategy for the interagency investigation into “responsible, peaceful, and sustainable exploration and use of cislunar space.”
Space agencies and commercial companies wishing to launch will want specific strategic trajectories and orbits,
“It may seem like space is big, but the specific orbits we’re most interested in fill up quickly,” Forczyk added.
The sudden increase in traffic is due to lower launch costs thanks to better technology and increased competition that lowered the price of launching objects into orbit.
The potential has yet to be tapped because there appear to be resources in space that could aid human missions, whether it be ice deposits on the Moon or precious metals on asteroids.
A rocket launched by the Indian Space Research Organization, Chandrayaan-2 (Moon Chariot 2), is seen in 2019
“Once people started thinking about it, they realized that water ice can provide substantial resources or allow for resource harvesting in other parts of the solar system,” said Marcus Holzinger, a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of from Colorado.
Water ice could help sustain human colonies on the moon, or split into oxygen and hydrogen to power rockets heading into deep space.
In 1967, the Outer Space Treaty was signed by more than 110 countries declaring that outer space should be used to benefit all of humanity with no country being able to claim or occupy the cosmos.
In 2020, the Artemis Accords established non-binding, multilateral agreements between the US and more than a dozen nations to maintain peaceful and transparent space exploration.
“Now we’re seeing rubber hit the road, because suddenly there are potentially geopolitical or commercial interests,” Holzinger said. “Maybe we need to come up with a more nuanced approach.”
Another tricky part of cislunar space is the number of objects that are already there, including satellites in low-Earth orbit and geostationary orbit.
Their paths are often non-circular, making them harder to find and follow, which presents its own challenges.
The further from Earth satellites and other spacecraft are, the more difficult it is to predict their paths with their trajectories influenced by the planet, the Sun, and the Moon.
But if humans want to venture beyond the Moon and head to Mars, security and transparency will be key.
“Those elements have to be there,” said Jim Myers of the research organization The Aerospace Corporation. ‘Unless we do this in a very thoughtful way, unless we plan, we’re going to run into all kinds of problems.’