Near-Earth orbit

• In August 2023, Russia’s Luna-25 probe crashed into the Moon’s surface, while India’s Chandrayann-3 mission successfully landed in the southern polar region, making India the fourth country to land on the Moon.
• I’m a professor of astronomy who has written a book about the future of space travel, articles about our future off-Earth, conflict in space, space congestion and the ethics of space exploration.

Space is getting crowded

• People think of space as vast and empty, but the near-Earth environment is starting to get crowded.
• Near-Earth orbit is even more congested than the space between Earth and the Moon.
• “It’s going to be like an interstate highway, at rush hour in a snowstorm, with everyone driving much too fast,” space launch expert Johnathan McDowell told Space.com.

The problem of space junk

• Humans have left a lot of junk on the Moon, including spacecraft remains like rocket boosters from over 50 crashed landings, nearly 100 bags of human waste and miscellaneous objects like a feather, golf balls and boots.
• Since no one owns the Moon, no one is responsible for keeping it clean and tidy.
• Tiny pieces of junk might not seem like a big issue, but that debris is moving at 15,000 mph (24,140 kph), 10 times faster than a bullet.

Nobody is in charge up there

• But the treaty is mute about companies and individuals, and it says nothing about how space resources can and can’t be used.
• The United Nations Moon Agreement of 1979 held that the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of humanity.
• The author and his research collaborators argued that U.S. environmental regulations should apply to the licensing of space launches.
• NASA has created and signed the Artemis Accords, broad but nonbinding principles for cooperating peacefully in space.
• Private companies are not party to the accords either, and some space entrepreneurs have deep pockets and big ambitions.