Soon nations could jostle for space at Moon’s South Pole

After its text-book landing near the South Pole of the Moon on August 23, Chandrayaan-3 is carrying out a series of scientific experiments during its packed ‘day’ (the equivalent of 14 days on Earth).

According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), one of the first activities for the lunar module (LM) Vikram was to dig into the regolith (made up of dust, rock, and volcanic pieces) to measure temperatures of the lunar crust at different depths throughout the day. The LM has also deployed the six-wheeled rover Pragyan to explore the new surroundings and conduct chemical, magnetic, and seismic analyses. Pragyan has left the imprint of India’s national emblem and ISRO’s logo stamped on its wheels on the dusty lunar surface which will last a million years — unless and until obliterated by the boot-prints of lunar settlers.

All previous Moon landings have been in the lunar equatorial region which is by now well mapped. So, it was an easy decision for ISRO to plan for Chandrayaan-2 (which was lost in 2019 due to an algorithm error while descending to the Moon from orbit) and Chandrayaan-3 to land on the Moon’s southern polar region where no spacecraft had been before.

Mysteries of the far side

The Moon’s South Pole is very attractive to spacefaring countries because of several reasons. Not the least of which are the rich lunar natural resources that could help humans colonise their nearest neighbour in space. The South Pole-Aitken Basin — at nearly 2,500 km across and 12 km deep, the largest impact crater in the solar system — lies within the confines of this region. The South Pole’s crater floors are always in the shadows, and are believed to hold huge reservoirs of water-ice (from ancient comet collisions). This will be an invaluable source of oxygen and rocket fuel for future settlers. Scientists could only speculate on the presence of water on the Moon for a long time till Chandrayaan-1 confirmed it in 2008. The discovery was subsequently validated by NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite in 2009 when it deliberately crashed a probe into the Moon and detected the tell-tale signature of water in the resulting plume of debris.

In sharp contrast to the crater depths, the mountain tops at its rim are constantly bathed in sunshine, offering an ideal perch for solar panels to convert the long hours of sunlight into electricity. Tapping this could power human settlements on the Moon, or be transmitted back to Earth through microwave bridges/bands. Data from previous lunar missions also point to ‘cold traps’ on the pock-marked lunar surface. These are believed to contain gases like Helium-3 that could fuel nuclear reactors to produce plentiful electricity without harmful emissions or creating radioactive waste.

Crowded South Pole

No wonder established and emerging spacefaring nations have been ramping up efforts in the last 20 years to return to the Moon. At least half a dozen space agencies and more than a dozen private companies have announced plans to launch more than 250 lunar missions before this decade is out. China and Japan have several robotic missions lined up soon as part of plans to build unmanned bases on the Moon.

China has declared its intention to launch a crewed Moon mission by 2030. The big strides in space exploration made by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) in recent years, including orbiting a permanently manned space station and carrying out a spectacular landing on the far side of the Moon, give credibility to this intent. The CNSA’s Chang'e-5 probe even landed on the far side of the Moon and returned lunar soil samples to Earth in 2020. That said, however, NASA is likely to be first off the block in returning men — and the first woman — to the Moon sometime in 2025, going by the pace of its Artemis programme in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Although India’s Moon ambitions are more modest, ISRO is reportedly working on designs to build 3D-printed ‘Moon igloos’ sourced from lunar dust for future astronauts. The space agency has produced tonnes of artificial lunar soil with properties closely resembling those of Moon dust in its lunar terrain test facility near Bengaluru. ISRO could build on the success of Chandrayaan-3 to dispatch a sample return mission to the Moon to mine and bring back lunar dust rich in Helium 3.

But that’s in the future. For now, with the lunar orbit getting crowded, it is high time space agencies considered the impact of exploration on the Moon’s “magnificent desolation” as Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin famously described it. No international law (the Moon Treaty is practically irrelevant) guarantees the airless and arid lunar surface would not become a casualty to the mercantile greed of lunar explorers. After all, resources like water-ice and rare Earth elements — vital to almost every modern technology — are believed to be concentrated in certain areas beneath the Moon’s surface. This could lead to serious technical and legal issues as would-be settlers jostle for space to mine in the same place.

It is important for all spacefaring powers to ponder this as they look Moonwards again.

(Prakash Chandra is former editor of the Indian Defence Review. He writes on aerospace and strategic affairs.)

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