Artemis and the great Moon race

NASA’s Artemis II mission to the Moon, which was launched on April 1, entered its lunar flyby phase on Monday. The mission is flying on the Space Launch System (SLS), currently the world’s most powerful operational rocket. The SLS carries the Orion deep-space crew capsule named Integrity. Inside Integrity are four astronauts – three Americans and one Canadian. The nearly 10-day journey took them around the Moon after which they slingshot back towards the Earth.

This flight plan took them 7,600 kilometres beyond the far side of the Moon. At that distance, they were over 4,06,000 kilometres from Earth – farther than any human has ever travelled. The crew did not land on the Moon or enter into lunar orbit. This mission is a high-stakes test flight to prove the reliability of technologies that control the environment and support life inside the spacecraft. It is one of many missions planned as part of the Artemis programme in the coming years.

It has been 53 years since humans went to the Moon under the Apollo programme. The Artemis programme also aims to send humans to the Moon, but the two are fundamentally different. The Apollo era was driven by Cold War politics and was a strictly American endeavour. Its goal was short-term missions for symbolic and scientific progress. In contrast, Artemis stands on a web of international collaborations and commercial partnerships. It aims to establish a long-term human presence on the Moon.

The Apollo programme was plagued by massive costs. Artemis is trying to overcome this issue by moving away from government-owned rockets in favour of commercially procured reusable rockets and hardware. This is built on the understanding that long-term lunar exploration can only succeed if it’s economically viable. In 2028, the Artemis IV mission intends to land humans on the Moon.

The rush to the Moon mirrors the geopolitical competition on Earth between the United States and China. The Chinese Communist Party views space as a ‘critical domain in international strategic competition’. It aims to supplant the US as the world’s leading space power by 2049.

Over the years, China has made rapid, phased progress on the Moon. It recently returned the first-ever samples from the lunar far side with its Chang’e 6 mission, while its upcoming Chang’e 7 and 8 missions will target the resource-rich south pole. By 2030, it has plans to land its astronauts, and by 2035, to construct a station on the Moon in partnership with Russia.

The US and its allies recognise that whoever establishes a sustained presence on the Moon first will dictate the future of the lunar economy. If China establishes a dominant lunar presence first, there is a profound fear in the West that it could use ‘lawfare’ (legal warfare) to enforce “keep out” zones over the most valuable lunar territory. The Artemis programme is a vehicle to carry not just the US and its partners’ infrastructure but also the values and governing preferences outlined in the Artemis Accords, a set of voluntary guidelines for conduct on celestial bodies.

However, this is not necessarily a disagreement between a rule-follower and a rule-breaker. China is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty. So far, it has conducted all its lunar missions within existing legal norms. The fear from the West is anticipatory. It is rooted in what a dominant lunar presence could enable rather than what China has done.

Economic and scientific bets

The Moon is seen as a massive reservoir of untapped wealth. Some craters near its south pole are permanently shadowed from the Sun and contain water ice. This water is being positioned as the ‘oil’ of the lunar economy. Besides human sustenance, it can also be split into liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to serve as rocket fuel. If mining this lunar water and turning it into fuel proves viable, the Moon can become a stepping stone to Mars and Deep Space. Besides water ice, the Moon also holds critical minerals indispensable for modern electronics. Also, the lunar soil has an abundance of Helium-3, a potential clean fuel source for future nuclear fusion reactors.

Many of these resources are geographically concentrated in small regions of the Moon. Due to an uneven gravitational field, only a limited number of stable low orbits exist around the Moon. Between the Earth and the Moon, there are limited points of favourable gravitational features for communication and surveillance satellites, referred to as Lagrange points. All of this creates a ‘gold rush’ dynamic to be the first to reach and control these strategic locations and orbits.

It is currently impossible to judge if mining lunar ice or critical minerals will ever be economically viable. There is also no clear or strategic military advantage to be gained from activities in cislunar space yet. However, in case the bets do pan out, the countries that manage it first will greatly increase their wealth and technological competitiveness.

Back on Earth, the positive offshoots of the Apollo programme have yielded tremendous social and economic returns over the decades. It reshaped consumer electronics and medical devices. There is every reason to expect Artemis to produce a similar wave of dual-use innovation.

India has established itself as an influential and capable ‘middle power’ in space and lunar exploration. The country has its own plans to send its astronauts to the Moon in the coming decades. However, the overall sense of urgency prevalent in other countries is largely missing in India’s space ambitions. It should focus on pumping more investment, increasing scale, and fast-tracking its ambitions for the Moon. Active stakes are the only way India can reap technological gains and shape norms and rules on the Moon and beyond.

(The writer is a staff research analyst, Advanced Military Technology and Outer Space Programme, Takshashila Institution)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.