Humans Are Revisiting the Moon—and the Rules of Spacefaring
The moon’s about to become a busy place. The Outer Space Treaty, a crucial agreement hashed out by negotiators from once-fledgling spacefaring nations, is now 55 years old—it was written before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had even set foot on the moon. During the Trump administration, US officials drafted the Artemis Accords—rules for lunar exploration which, although developed by a single nation, could shape the future of moon outposts, colonies, and space mining. And the agency has already chosen some candidate landing spots for astronauts’ return to the lunar surface in 2025 or 2026—all near sites on the south pole that may harbor much-needed water ice. “The Artemis Accords are more of a declaratory policy for the United States: ‘This is how we intend to act on the moon, and these are our principles we’re going to follow,’” says Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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