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The Artemis Accords: A New Race to Dominate Space

image of American flag superimposed over the moon

We are on the verge of a new space age – the age of New Space. Unlike the space race of the Cold War era – starting with the 1957 launch, by the U.S.S.R, of Sputnik, the first human-made object in space, and culminating in the U.S. Apollo moon mission and the 1969 moon landing – in which the competitors were national space agencies, this new space age is being driven in a large part by billionaires, private space corporations and commercial business ventures. It will be characterized by the onset of space tourism, mining of the moon, asteroids and other planets and, in all likelihood, habitation of space and colonization of other planets and celestial bodies.

Alongside the well-rehearsed justifications for space exploration – of scientific discovery, furthering or fulfilling the destiny of humankind, perhaps extending the reach and viability of the human species in off-world or inter-planetary habitats – this new era will be sustained and driven by motivations of profit and resource extraction.

All these fast approaching space activities throw-up significant ethical challenges. How would space habitats be governed? Who should get to own and profit from space resources? What are the implications of the increasing use of satellite technology, and how can we prevent the militarization of space? What environmental issues do we need to be aware of – such as forwards and backwards contamination (causing changes to space environments by introducing terrestrial matter or to Earth environments from extra-terrestrial matter)? How do we understand concepts of ownership, sovereignty and heritage in relation to space?

The ethical implications of all kinds of activities in space are not just important for astronauts, space tourists, or future inhabitants of new colonies, but are important for the vast majority of humans who will never go into space; that is to say, for ‘all humankind’.

Legal scholars and space law experts recognize the current regime of international space law needs updating. The privatization and commercialization of space is one of the most significant issues the international community will face in coming years, and there is urgent need for regulation and policy to catch up.

The U.S. government is moving to shape the (United Nations sponsored) international space regime in a mold that is favorable to commercial activity – through domestic law as well as by spearheading a series of international agreements known as the Artemis Accords.

Artemis is the sister of Apollo – and the mission of NASA’s newest lunar program is sending humans back to the moon for exploration, and then (as it becomes possible) sending astronauts to Mars. It seems clear that the program increases the likelihood of resource extraction and eventual habitation.

The Artemis Accords are a series of bilateral agreements the U.S. signed in 2020 with a select few nations it wishes to partner with in space (including the U.K., U.A.E., Japan, Italy, Canada and Australia), and are designed to advance NASA’s Artemis Program. Though they are under the aegis of NASA, these accords clearly have implications for commercial space ventures. The accords enshrine the core principle that “space resource extraction and utilization can and will be conducted under the auspices of the Outer Space Treaty.”

Essentially, the Accords are an attempt to secure an interpretation of the 1969 Outer Space Treaty (OST) that will allow activities of “space resource extraction” which are not universally acknowledged or agreed to. To understand why some are concerned, how the Artemis Accords stand in relation to other important space treaties – in particular, the OST and the Moon Agreement – must be appreciated.

First of the five core space treaties, the OST was signed in 1969 by the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. at the height of Cold War tensions, amid fervid space technology competition, and was drawn up under the auspices of the UN as a way of preventing the militarization of space. (In this it has not entirely succeeded.) The OST is the foundation of the international space regime which sets out the most fundamental principles of space exploration and use, and its basic tenets are reflected in policies adopted by the international community to govern human activities in space.

Article One states:

“The exploration and use of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development, and shall be the province of all mankind.” (My italics.)

Article Two states:

“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.” (My italics.)

So the basis for all international space law, from its inception, was an agreement which essentially ruled out ownership of space environments by nations or individuals, including the moon, planets, or other celestial bodies.

The Moon Agreement – fifth of the five core space treaties, opened for signatures in 1979 – was drawn up largely by non-spacefaring states. It was an attempt to strengthen the terms of these principles of the OST, and to protect against the possibility that dominant space actors could claim (and benefit exclusively from) space resources, without any accountability to, or input from, smaller and less capable states.

Neither the U.S., nor any other major space-faring nation, has signed the Moon Agreement, giving it very little power to influence New Space activity. The reason: the Moon Agreement goes a step further by designating space as “the common heritage” as well as “the province of all mankind.” This principle holds in place two important provisions of the Moon Agreement which made it unpalatable to powerful spacefaring nations.

Article Four states:

“The exploration and use of the moon shall be the province of all mankind and shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of economic or scientific development.” (My italics.)

And Article Eleven, which states that the moon’s resources cannot be the property of any state or non-state entity or person, goes on to stipulate that parties to the agreement “establish an international regime… to govern the exploitation of the natural resources of the moon…”

Essentially the Moon Agreement is a treaty in which less powerful countries sought to secure space resources as a kind of global commons that would benefit everyone. However, the implication that this joint claim might entail an equitable sharing of space resources and benefits more broadly, was enough to deter major space players from endorsing the spirit and the letter of the agreement.

Instead, via the Artemis Accords, the U.S. is now seeking bilateral consensus to advance an interpretation of “the province of all mankind” that rejects that which the Moon Agreement tried to secure. Specifically, the accords push an interpretation in which resource extraction does not violate the prohibition on national sovereignty or individual ownership in space. (Section 10 of the Artemis Accords says: “…the extraction of space resources does not inherently constitute national appropriation under Article II of the Outer Space Treaty…”)

In contrast to the global commons approach, the U.S., and other spacefaring states, are taking a dominance approach. There has been some backgrounding on this in U.S. domestic law. In 2015 Congress passed the Space Launch Competitiveness Act – stating that any U.S. citizen or corporation shall be entitled to “possess, own, transport, use and sell any space resource obtained in accordance with applicable laws.”

And a U.S. Presidential executive order signed by Donald Trump in 2020 more or less kills off the spirit of the Moon Agreement. The Executive Order on Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources, 2020 makes clear that the U.S., including private or corporate interests operating under its flag, does not consider outer space to be a ‘global commons’.

All this clearly reflects the huge political and monetary inequalities existent in the world. In international law, as in other areas of law, gestures to universality, objectivity, and neutrality are spurious, because, despite pretensions to be otherwise, the law reflects the power imbalances within a society, and international law reflects them across the globe.

Space law is a relatively new field, and at present it functions as a species of international law, through treaties and international agreements. Space Law specialist Cassandra Steer writes: “Treaties, though negotiated in a multilateral setting, are always a result of political give and take, and the states who can leverage their power the most take more than they give.” As Steer argues, “There is no equality between countries, despite the notion of formal equality as a value underpinning international law.” Similarly, there is no equal access to space, nor equal distribution of the benefits derived from space. Despite the promise of the OST, space is far from being “the province of all mankind.”

As we enter the New Space era an updated international legal regime is needed; a regime which is robust enough to bring domestic law into harmony with international obligations and treaties, and one which is geared towards managing the new, commercial uses of space as a frontier for private enterprise. This needs to happen before the horse bolts.

The size of this task can’t be underestimated. It requires a collaborative effort to revisit and carefully reflect upon fundamental ethical concepts of value and equity and justice.

This includes thinking about how to share resources by revisiting questions of claim, ownership, and sovereignty in space. It means thinking about what intrinsic value space environments might have, and what ways we think it is important to protect them. It involves considering questions of heritage and it involves thinking about rights in terms of resources that are finite, such as the use of near-Earth orbit which is already experiencing extremely high volumes of satellite traffic.

Given that the terrestrial environment is facing catastrophe from climate change and ecological destruction, which is itself an outcome of resource depletion from rapacious capitalist activity, I think we, as a global community, should work to prevent such impulses from dominating our ventures beyond this world as well.

And like many things that feel urgent in this time of rapid change, we must do it soon or it will be too late.

Ethical Concerns About Space Mining

image of asteroid in deep space

It was a big news day in Canada last month as it was announced that, thanks to an agreement on the Artemis program, a Canadian astronaut will join the United States on the first crewed mission to the moon scheduled to take place in just a few years. While the Canadian government was happy to note that this will mean that Canada will be only the second country to have an astronaut in deep space, the efforts to return to the moon are not driven only in the interests of science and discovery. This may be only a first step towards mining in space and that prospect raises ethical concerns.

The Artemis program followed the signing of Space Policy Directive 1 which calls for the United States to return humans to the moon for “long-term exploration and utilization.” Since then, in collaboration with private companies and international partners, missions have been scheduled for crewed missions in just under three years. While much of the program is scientific in nature and is being led by NASA, part of the program includes the Artemis Accords which have been signed by several nations and which outline some guidelines for the mining of space resources. According to the accord, the signatories affirmed various guidelines for the “extraction and utilization of space resources.”

According to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, no nation may claim ownership of the moon or other celestial body. Space shall be free for exploration and use by all signatories. The Moon Treaty of 1979, drafted by the United Nations states that the Moon is a common heritage of humans and harvesting its resources is forbidden except by an international regime. It also bans any ownership of extraterrestrial property by a private organization. However, the United States, Russia, and China have not ratified it. Instead, in 2015 the United States passed the Commercial Space Launch Competitive Act which explicitly allows private corporations to engage in commercial exploitation of space resources even while avoiding asserting sovereignty over a celestial body. In April of this year, Trump signed an executive order encouraging space mining with it noting, “it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space.”

The moon, in addition to several other space objects, contains minerals which can be extremely valuable in space and on Earth. Some of these are difficult to get on Earth and are located mostly in places like China, Russia, and Congo. For example, the moon is estimated to have more helium-3 than Earth and has several uses, including a possible use as fuel for nuclear fusion. The moon also contains lithium, titanium, aluminum, cobalt, silicon, and other important minerals. Materials like these can be useful for building everything from medical equipment to electric cars which can help with environmental problems. In space, such materials can be used for making things like rocket fuel and solar panels.

There are several reasons why such mining can be beneficial. As mentioned, there are plenty of materials that could be enormously helpful for further space exploration. Bringing material like rocket fuel from Earth is expensive, and while the costs have dropped in price in recent years, it will be cheaper if materials can be sourced from space itself for projects like the planned Lunar Gateway and for missions to Mars. A big reason why the costs of space travel have come down is owing to the investment of private companies. Greater private investment into mining may make the costs even cheaper over time, and this may allow for more efforts at scientific exploration and experimentation. It can also be of benefit on Earth as many of these materials can be used in medical technology.

Another important reason for the Artemis Accords is that the laws and treaties governing space were outdated. The nations that have signed on believe that it is a necessary step to establish guidelines for lunar exploration and to avoid conflict between different parties from Earth. The accords stress that while no one owns the Moon, parties that send equipment do own it and are liable for any damage they may cause. Setting out clear expectations for commercial interests now may help facilitate standards regarding issues like waste and prevent the moon from being an industrial dump.

On the other hand, there are several concerns that could arise with mining either the lunar surface or other celestial bodies. For example, there are several legal and political concerns. Russia and China are not part of the Artemis Accords. Russia has been critical of the accords and the Artemis program for being too U.S.-centric and for being a step back from the Outer Space Treaty whose central provision is that all nations of the world should benefit from space exploration. Indeed, one main criticism is that this is not being governed by the United Nations. A recent article for the journal Science argues “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.”

There are also the larger ethical concerns about who owns space, whether it should be mined, and what kinds of problems this could create. For example, in their article How much of the Solar System should we leave as wilderness? Martin Elvis and Tony Milligan suggest that we should already be concerned about “super-exploitation” where a growing space economy could lead to exhaustion of the finite resources of the solar system “surprisingly soon.” They note, “Approaching a point of super-exploitation is something that we ought to be concerned about if we assume that we ought to be concerned, at this point in time and in action-guiding ways, not only about ourselves but about future generations of humans.” They suggest that so long as economic growth is exponential, we should limit ourselves to 1/8th of the exploitable materials of the solar system with the rest being left “wild.”

The economic concerns may not stop there either. Efforts to mine material on the moon may negatively impact the national economies who may rely on selling those resources. There is also the potential worry about how much could be brought back. A single asteroid of platinum has been valued at possibly 50 billion dollars. One-eighth of the iron in the Asteroid Belt contains more than a million times all of Earth’s current reserves. Such dramatic changes in resource extraction and refinement has the potential to dramatically harm an economy as well.

There is also a concern about possible future militarization. While current treaties and laws regarding space prohibit many forms of military operations, if mining begins and not everyone agrees to the same rules, then future conflicts in space may then require militarization to support commercial interests. The United States Space Force Guardians may be called upon to secure U.S. interests in space. Lunar mining, and the mining of celestial objects in general, will carry with a large host of ethical problems and concerns and these will likely become better known to us sooner rather than later.

Ongoing American Exceptionalism: To Infinity and Beyond

photograph of American flag planted on Moon with Astronaut staring off into space

On April 7th, the Trump administration released an executive order declaring that the USA doesn’t understand space or the moon to be under international jurisdiction, but rather a domain for particular countries to pursue their own interests. The order states, “Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space.”

There are 108 signatories for the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies,” the main document outlining law in space. This document is now a precedent for treating space continuously with international law: no particular government has authority unless there is a particular interaction with data transmission between citizens, for example, that clearly falls under the jurisdiction of a particular nation. For instance, in 2019, Anne McClain, a US astronaut allegedly signed into Former Air Force intelligence officer Summer Worden’s bank account without Worden’s permission. Worden filed an identity theft charge against McClain. Because the data connection, bank, and citizens were all under the purview of the US, it was determined to fall under U.S. law.

Unless circumstances as particular as these arise, however, corporations, states, and entities in space are meant to operate under a set of regulations that broadly set out international regulations. This is for practical reasons as much as anything else:

“When there’s a hurricane, earthquake or other disaster, Harrington said that multiple countries with remote-sensing satellites — including the U.S., Japan, South Africa, Russia and the European Union — are part of a disaster charter. Whomever had a satellite passing over the disaster-ridden region before, after and during the event has agreed to share data to mitigate damage, saving lives and property.”

Trump’s executive order breaks with the international push for cooperation and neutrality in pursuing space exploration. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, as well as NASA, have repeatedly emphasized that international cooperation is crucial for pursuing space exploration.

Trump has been enthusiastic about expanding American power into space, as his ambition for developing a Space Force has shown in the past year. His enthusiasm for expanding mining rights and removing mining regulation on Earth make this also a natural expansion of his previous zeal. However, similar to his propagation of the Space Force, it remains unclear what, if any, interest or action will follow from this declaration of Trumpian interest.

Having a leader that is out of touch with the reasoning behind the policies is dangerous and can have lasting impact on not only our nation’s progress but the necessary cooperative efforts of the international community. When one powerful nation withdraws efforts, the rest of a coalition suffers. This is one way to harm a community—not by sanctioning, attacking, or aiming malice directly towards other nations or actors, but by neglecting to take their interests into considerations in one’s own pursuits. Neglect in such circumstances is a form of disrespect. It also is not in the USA’s best interests, for, as experts agree, the successful pursuit of progress in space will necessarily be a joint effort, relying on the very nations Trump continues to ignore in the here and now.

Rethinking Modification of the Natural World

Photograph of people touring glass biospheres

This article has a set of discussion questions tailored for classroom use. Click here to download them. To see a full list of articles with discussion questions and other resources, visit our “Educational Resources” page.


Aristotle famously pointed out that humans stand out from other living beings because humans are rational.  To live a flourishing human life is to live in accordance with the dictates of reason. Much of the philosophical thought about the essence of man going forward was heavily influenced by what Aristotle had to say on this point.  It is hard to deny the importance of rationality for the survival of the human species. Because we can reason, we can use language, make plans, satisfy obligations, know things about the world, and, importantly, we can change the world as we see fit to meet our needs.  It would be an understatement to say that we took full advantage of that last part. It is important that we ask ourselves: Are there any constraints on how far we should take our ability to modify the world around us? Continue reading “Rethinking Modification of the Natural World”