To aid future lunar missions, NASA to buy moon resources from private companies

To aid the future expeditions of astronauts on the moon and rumored space station establishment, an initiative is launched by NASA on Thursday. Under this private companies will be paid to mine resources on the moon, NASA will buy rocks, dirt and other lunar materials. As they want to encourage the involvement of private sector in extraction of lunar resources for its use.

This plan would not violate a 1967 treaty that holds that celestial bodies and space are exempt from national claims of ownership, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in a blog post.

Under NASA’s Artemis program, President Donald Trump’s administration envisions a return of American astronauts to the moon by 2024. NASA has cast such as mission as a precursor to a future first human voyage to Mars.

“The bottom line is we are going to buy some lunar soil for the purpose of it demonstrating that it can be done,” Bridenstine said during an event hosted by the Secure World Foundation, a space policy organization.

Under the initiative disclosed on Thursday, NASA offered to purchase limited amounts of lunar resources and asked companies to offer proposals. Under contracts whose terms would vary, a company mining on the moon would collect lunar rocks or dirt to sell to NASA without having to bring the resources back to Earth.

“This is one small step for space resources, but a giant leap for policy and precedent,” Mike Gold, NASA’s chief of international relations, told Reuters.

“They are paying the company to sell them a rock that the company owns. That’s the product,” Joanne Gabrynowicz, former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Space Law, said in an interview. “A company has to decide for itself if it’s worth taking the financial and technological risk to do this to sell a rock.”

In May NASA debated over the basic principles governing how people will live and work on moon, and how it is going the affect them. The whole idea is to formulate a set of principles that would help achieving sustainable and long term goals lunar missions.