Will the US claim the first commercial moon landing? | DW News

it could be history in the making a private mission to the moon has blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canal in Florida 3 2 1 ignition and lift off American Aerospace company intuitive machines launched its odys Lander on a rocket made by Elon musk's SpaceX company it's trying to become the first commercial spacecraft to successfully land on the lunar surface the launch was originally planned for Wednesday but it was postponed due to a technical glitch this time everything went according to plan and if the landing also goes well ody disas will search for water on the Moon and what some are calling a second Space Race the American moonlander Odus fires up to set off into space its aim is to bring a camera and newly developed NASA measuring equipment to the Moon its destination is the Luna South Pole there Odysseus will seek out a spot to land Softly on the moon's surface a new race to the moon is on satellites have discovered water on its poles the most important resource for human space travel this race is not driven just by scientific curiosity it's a quest to develop the best technology discover resources and to secure future markets col NASA wants to build a station in the moon's orbit and outposts on the surface the space agency is working together with European Japanese and Canadian Partners many US companies are hoping for lucrative contracts and income from space tourism China Russia and India also have Moon tourism in their sides in order for any of this to happen it's Mission critical to find a way to land safely but this is no easy task and many have [Music] failed Russia's Luna 25 Mission crashed into a lunar [Music] crater and paragen the first commercial American moonlander suff the fuel leak and self-destructed over the Pacific Ocean Japan's slim robot actually landed upside down after a failed attempt India was able to put a robot and a vehicle on the moon meanwhile China was the first nation to land on the far side of the moon if odys mission is successful the US will be able to claim the first commercial Moon lending NASA also plans to build its new human staffed station there in the darkness of the Luna South Pole let's bring in Jill Stewart from the London School of Economics she's an expert in the politics ethics and law of space exploration and exploitation welcome to DW now back in the 20th century the space race was a contest between the United States and the former Soviet Union now private companies are getting involved what is different in this new era first I'd like to highlight that uh space commercialization has been around for a long time since the 1970s we've seen for example the United States try and push some of space development activity to the private sector what's new here is the amount of commercial activity that we have going on and that they're starting to participate in these really big and exciting projects like going back to the moon so it is something that's different but there's also not so many similarities with the first Space Race How concerned are you about governmental space agencies like NASA now relying so heavily on technology provided by private companies again I think it's not so much a concern because it's something that has been going on for a long time uh and in a way it actually spreads out the risk of these Technologies across different stakeholders and so in some ways I think it'll Shore up our abilities to access space having said that I think there are some interesting legal and ethical issues around having more commercial entities going into space these entities are still largely getting their funding from government contracts so I think sometimes we see it as a dichotomy between government and Commercial activity whereas in reality it's much more Blended than that but we do start to see um commercial entities that are able to place things on the moon we've seen companies that are are placing things that could be construed as advertisements on the moon and so I think we also want to think about what we as a collective want to have placed uh out in space on Celestial territory and what all of that means for us yeah let's talk about the political legal and ethical questions the ones that you focus on in your research um which are the most pressing ones if we're setting our sights on the moon again there are some complicated legal questions that I think we're going to see us having to deal with more and more so there's a pre-existing legal infrastructure for outer space that has existed all the way back to the 1960s which says that outer space is neutral territory and that no country can lay claim to any Celestial territory now these were written before we were um engaging in in uh potentially establishing settlements on other planets and so as we get to the technological capabilities of having uh potential bases on the moon there are going to be questions about for example the extraction of resources and who's allowed to do that and also uh simply who's allowed to occupy spaces without technically constituting ownership of those spaces so there has been some activity in trying to unpack these legal issues um such as the aremis Accord which was drafted by the United States in 2020 which has sought to Overlay the pre-existing infrastructure with some ideas about how we could use resources in situ and coordinate our activities across different bases but there is some controversy around that and there are some countries that have notably not signed up to the emis Accords such as Russia and China now space tourism is a big buzzword and it has been for a couple of decades NASA's emus Mission plans to establish a permanent base on the moon how much closer would that bring us to seeing people like you and I go to the moon and is that even a desirable goal so again space tourism actually started in the early 2000s but it's becoming more accessible now for two reasons for one um initially people were going up to the International Space Station for huge ticket prices to stay on board for a long time now we see these low orbital missions that are only in in um in in outer space for a few minutes um as well as some that are are going up to orbit and discussions about potentially bringing tourists for example to the surface of the Moon I think that these are probably a lot further away than we sometimes see the timelines projected as there are going to be a lot of safety issues and also it's going to remain the domain of the very wealthy even as the price point comes down right now these suborbital flights are costing just under $100,000 per person so it's not something that's going to um take off sorry for the bad pun too too quickly but it is something that I think we'll see in the future but I think it will continue to be sort of extreme tourism that's very expensive and carries with it some risks that Jill Stewart from the London School of Economics thank you so much for those insights

Channel: DW News

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Keywords: DW News, moon, lunar lander, moon resources, moon water, moon race, spacex moon

Id: SF_q6kRPsU8

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024