You might have heard that India launched an unmanned lunar orbiter on Wednesday, but did you know that one of its primary objectives is to identify natural resources, including uranium, on the moon? Will this be the beginning of a global corporate race to lay claim to slices of the collective pie in the sky?
The answer, legally, is no. According to the Outer Space Treaty (which was signed in 1967 and has been ratified by almost every country with a space program) outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation.
But, if resources like uranium (a coveted fuel for nuclear power plants) are found on the moon, how long will a 40-year-old treaty and stand up to a modern-day push for control?
According to Slate.com,
another international agreement, the so-called Moon Treaty, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1979, is a good deal clearer. It states that “the moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind” and specifies that those resources should only be exploited under the oversight of a new international regime. But the Moon Treaty was never accepted by any of the traditional space powers, like the United States or Russia. India is among the 17 countries that have signed the Moon Treaty, but it never fully ratified the agreement.
Instead of focusing on what, if any, legal rights India has to resources on the moon, lunar mining sheds light on another, more important issue: have human beings really raped our planet so thoroughly that we have to go to outer space support our demand for energy?
[Via: Slate.com]
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