Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
| DOI | 10.1126/science.abd3402 |
| U.S. policy puts the safe development of space at risk | |
| Aaron Boley; Michael Byers | |
| 2020-10-09 | |
| 发表期刊 | Science
 |
| 出版年 | 2020 |
| 英文摘要 | In September 2020, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that it is seeking proposals from private companies to extract small amounts of regolith from the surface of the Moon. According to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, the exercise will buttress an interpretation of international space law that is favored by the U.S. government: “What we're trying to do is make sure that there is a norm of behavior that says that resources can be extracted and that we're doing it in a way that is in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty” (OST) ([ 1 ][1]). NASA's move is part of a larger U.S. diplomatic effort. In April 2020, President Trump signed an executive order (EO) that affirmed a right of commercial space mining and directed the U.S. State Department to secure the expressed support of U.S. allies. Shortly after, NASA announced a plan for bilateral Artemis Accords, which, if accepted by many nations, could enable the U.S. interpretation of international space law to prevail and make the United States—as the licensing nation for most of the world's space companies—the de facto gatekeeper to the Moon, asteroids, and other celestial bodies. Because acquiescence is often treated as consent in international law, even NASA's purchase of regolith would, if not protested by other nations, strengthen the U.S. interpretation. Other nations need to speak up, now.
The Artemis Accords are to include recognition of a right to commercial space mining subject to national regulation only (i.e., no need for a new multilateral agreement), as well as the right of companies to declare “safety zones” around their operations to exclude other actors. Negotiations with individual NASA partner nations are reportedly under way, with the conclusion of an Artemis Accord being a prerequisite for participation in NASA's Artemis lunar program. For many nations, the chance to have their own astronaut on the Moon is a powerful incentive.
The permissibility of commercial space mining has become a central aspect of U.S. space policy: In 2015, the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act gave U.S. citizens and companies the right to own and sell space resources under U.S. law. In 2017, Luxembourg followed suit, adopting legislation in support of commercial space mining and offering subsidies to space mining companies that incorporate there. Other nations might seek to attract companies by offering minimal regulations and lax enforcement. Leaving regulation to national governments thus risks a “race to the bottom” and even the emergence of “flags of convenience.”
The 2020 EO goes further than the 2015 legislation by explicitly rejecting space as a “global commons” and dismissing the 1979 United Nations (UN) Moon Agreement as irrelevant because it has not been ratified by major spacefaring nations. The Moon Agreement declares the Moon and other celestial bodies the “common heritage of mankind” and provides a mechanism for initiating a multilateral negotiation on space mining.
Most other nations take the view that space mining should only be conducted under an international system of regulation, oversight, and benefit sharing. The 1967 OST provides the governance framework for all space activities. Article II reads: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
The term “national appropriation,” however, is not defined in the OST, making it possible to argue that the extraction and even the sale of space resources is not prohibited and is therefore already permitted. NASA's Bridenstine has drawn an analogy to fishing on the high seas, where a fish cannot be owned while in the ocean but can be owned as soon as it is caught. The analogy is apt because it concerns the acquisition of ownership of something from an “area beyond national jurisdiction.” Still, it should be noted that fishing without science-based regulation often leads to overexploitation and even destruction of stocks, and that nations have responded to these risks by negotiating multilateral treaties on the management of high-seas fisheries that result in science-based quotas and sometimes moratoria.
The Artemis Accords have been condemned by Russia as a blatant move to remake international space law in favor of the United States. The first casualty of this initiative might therefore be the long and stable relationship of space cooperation between these two nations. Nor is there any indication that the United States will involve China, another superpower and an increasingly capable space actor, in this effort to develop a new governance regime.
The commercial potential of space mining is receiving most of the attention, but there is also a strong motivation rooted in science and exploration. At least 14 national space agencies have identified in situ resource use (ISRU) as a needed capability for long-duration missions, including crewed missions to the Moon, Mars, and deep space ([ 2 ][2]). Artemis will be the first such NASA-led program ([ 3 ][3]). Resources such as ice and water-bearing minerals from the lunar South Pole will provide fuel, radiation shielding, and life support for surface and orbital operations. The regolith will be mined for construction materials and as a source of hydrogen and oxygen ([ 4 ][4]). Many asteroids also contain an abundance of water and minerals ([ 5 ][5], [ 6 ][6]) that could be used to support space operations.
ISRU will provide new science opportunities and unprecedented sampling of celestial bodies. For example, asteroids contain some of the oldest materials in the Solar System, some of which have experienced little thermal processing since their incorporation into parent bodies. The Moon's ice deposits are a partial record of volatile delivery to Earth. However, space mining, especially if conducted by loosely regulated private companies, could hinder science. For example, water and oxygen could be extracted from astromaterials by pyrolysis ([ 7 ][7]), and, without systematic scientific sampling before alteration or consumption, valuable information about the Solar System (e.g., locked into cosmochemical or mineralogical signatures) could be lost. Analysis to maximize resource yields is not generally the same as that needed for understanding the Solar System. Inconsistent practices in resource extraction, a likely result of purely national regulations, would only exacerbate the losses in scientific opportunities ([ 8 ][8]).
Some of the first efforts at private space exploration have already manifested a less than rigorous approach to risk avoidance. In 2019, the Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL crashed a robotic lander on the Moon. Unbeknownst to SpaceIL, its partner—the Arch Mission Foundation—had placed thousands of nearly indestructible tardigrades on board ([ 9 ][9]). In 2018, SpaceX launched a Tesla automobile on an orbit that extends past Mars; although no impact with Mars is expected, there was an initial lack of clarity on the mission profile and the potential for the unsterilized payload to encounter Mars ([ 10 ][10]).
Mining can generate serious operational concerns. Lunar dust is a known challenge to operations on the Moon. Any surface activity could exacerbate lunar dust migration, including by lofting dust onto trajectories that cross lunar orbits, such as that of NASA's proposed Lunar Gateway ([ 11 ][11]). Moreover, without cooperation by all actors, the limited number of useful lunar orbits could quickly become filled with space debris.
On asteroids, low escape speeds will make it difficult to prevent the loss of surface material. Even if full enclosures are used, waste material may be purposefully jettisoned. Mining could also lead to uncontrolled outbursts of volatile sublimation after the removal of surface layers. Because the asteroids targeted for mining are likely to be those with small minimum orbit intersection distances, the resulting meteoroid debris streams could threaten lunar operations as well as satellites in Earth's orbit ([ 12 ][12]). In a worst-case scenario, a trajectory change resulting from mining could eventually lead to an Earth-impact emergency.
Space missions already provide some evidence of these risks. In 2019, during the course of Japan's Hayabusa2 mission, a small impactor was used to make a crater on (162173) Ryugu ([ 13 ][13]). Some of the resulting anthropogenic meteoroids could begin reaching Earth during the 2033 apparition. In 2022, NASA will test its ability to deflect an asteroid by striking (65803) Didymos B (Dimorphos) with the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft. This impact will produce anthropogenic meteoroids, with the possibility of immediate delivery to Earth ([ 14 ][14]). Although these risks are small, they demonstrate how easily human actions can change the near-Earth environment.
As for the safety zones envisaged in the Artemis Accords, these would provide a space actor with many of the benefits of territory while relieving it of long-term obligations of stewardship. There are analogies here on Earth, including “orphan” oil wells and abandoned mine tailings.
Lunar dust, anthropogenic meteoroids, and the loss of science opportunities are examples of negative externalities that could arise because of space mining. Their inadequate consideration can be expected when rulemaking and oversight in an area beyond national jurisdiction are left to individual nations rather than a multilateral regime. The approach being taken by the U.S. government, of bilateral negotiations and purely national regulations, ignores widely adopted insights into the management of common pool resources and global commons ([ 8 ][8], [ 15 ][15]). Multilateral management takes time and requires compromise but also internalizes externalities by, for example, ensuring a degree of peer review with respect to the proposed actions of individual governments. The U.S. approach, instead, is an application of basic game theory—the prisoner's dilemma—whereby individual, similarly situated actors, in negotiations with a more powerful actor, are denied the opportunity to communicate with each other. Of course, U.S. allies are not precluded from coordinating with each other as they negotiate with NASA—indeed, coordination is their best strategy—but the bilateral context makes this more difficult.
We have been here before with different outcomes. In 1945, the United States claimed exclusive jurisdiction over the resources of the continental shelf located offshore its territory. Although novel , the claim quickly became part of international law, because its framing made the same right available to every coastal nation. Those nations responded by making the same claim themselves.
During negotiation of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the United States demanded that private companies have access to deep seabed resources beyond the continental shelf and be answerable to national regulators only. Most other nations wished the deep seabed to be recognized as “common heritage of mankind,” with mining subject to international regulation and oversight. The latter view prevailed, mostly because of coordinated negotiating by developing nations. The United States has not ratified UNCLOS but accepts its provisions as customary international law.
With its proposed Artemis Accords, the United States is overlooking best practice with regard to the sustainable development of space. Instead of pressing ahead unilaterally and bilaterally, the United States should support negotiations on space mining within the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, the same multilateral body that drafted the five major space treaties of the 1960s and '70s. Meanwhile, NASA's actions must be seen for what they are—a concerted, strategic effort to redirect international space cooperation in favor of short-term U.S. commercial interests, with little regard for the risks involved.
1. [↵][16]1. J. Foust
, “NASA offers to buy lunar samples to set space resources precedent,” SpaceNews, 10 September 2020; |
| 领域 | 气候变化 ; 资源环境 |
| URL | 查看原文 |
| 引用统计 | |
| 文献类型 | 期刊论文 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/298081 |
| 专题 | 气候变化 资源环境科学 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Aaron Boley,Michael Byers. U.S. policy puts the safe development of space at risk[J]. Science,2020. |
| APA | Aaron Boley,&Michael Byers.(2020).U.S. policy puts the safe development of space at risk.Science. |
| MLA | Aaron Boley,et al."U.S. policy puts the safe development of space at risk".Science (2020). |
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