Over the previous few years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, higher generally known as DARPA, has increasingly zeroed-in on the moon.
A trio of proactive DARPA undertakings seeking to advance technologies to be used on the moon has been welcomed in some quarters. Back in 2021, DARPA kick-started its Novel Orbital moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass Efficient Design (NOM4D) program. Last month, DARPA threw in some “LOGIC” into the combination via the Lunar Operating Guidelines for Infrastructure Consortium, or LOGIC for brief. DARPA has also initiated the 10-12 months Lunar Architecture (LunA-10) Capability Study to spur the event of an integrated future lunar infrastructure for “peaceful U.S. and international use.”
A DARPA spokesperson told Space.com that the LunA-10 capability study and the NOM4D program are separate but complementary efforts. “LunA-10 is targeted on efficient interoperability of key network nodes for a vibrant, future, lunar economy, whereas NOM4D is targeted on breaking free from launch mass, size, and vibration limitations to enable designing and constructing very large structures, akin to antennas and solar arrays, in orbit,” the spokesperson stated.
But with a lot moon technology research coming from an agency overseen by the U.S. Department of Defense, it begs the query: Could such initiatives trigger worries and spark counter-actions by other nations to put in military might on the Earth’s moon?
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Rigorously calibrated
DARPA’s multi-pronged work appears to mesh with the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967 that calls for the moon and other celestial bodies for use exclusively for peaceful purposes. There’s also the U.S.-led Artemis Accords that reinforces peaceful use of the moon by establishing norms of behavior, as espoused inside the UN Outer Space Treaty. On Nov. 30, the Republic of Angola became the thirty third country worldwide and the third in Africa to sign the Artemis Accords.
“DARPA’s project seems very fastidiously calibrated to catalyze a successful industrial lunar industry inside a decade, which is clearly a peaceful activity,” said Peter Garretson, a senior fellow in defense studies on the American Foreign Policy Council. He’s a well-regarded strategy consultant who focuses on space and defense and co-authored “Scramble for the Skies – The Great Power Competition to Control the Resources of Outer Space”(Rowman & Littlefield, 2020).
“As such, DARPA itself shouldn’t be doing anything on or near the moon, but somewhat helping industry to create interoperable standards which can aid in deconfliction, advance sustainability, and advance standards to enable emergency assistance,” said Garretson.
Furthermore, Garretson said that DARPA has been clear that it would be transparent in releasing its results. DARPA is working closely with NASA, he said, to directly assist NASA’s “stretch goals” of their moon-to-Mars objectives.
Self-sustaining industry
“But what is very useful is that, while NASA typically concentrates on exploration and science and isn’t confident of its mission to catalyze industry, DARPA is unapologetic in attempting to catalyze a self-sustaining industry,” Garretson said, and each DARPA’s LunA-10 and NOMAD seek to comprehend the White House-generated National Cislunar Strategy.
Garretson said it can be crucial to notice that no Department of Defense (DoD) agency — DARPA, Space Force, Air Force Research Laboratory) has articulated any plans or programs where the DoD itself would engage in any surface activity on the moon, “and that is actually true of each LunA-10 and NOM4D. Each advance the technology and retire technical risk to enable civil and industrial actors, and all their activities happen here on planet Earth with no flight manifest in any respect,” he concluded.
Dominating the domain
Within the meantime, nonetheless, concern over what non-U.S. moon players could also be contemplating is on the rise.
As an example, in its 2023 report back to Congress released last month, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission observed that “China seeks to regulate access to the moon for strategic goals.”
The report states that Beijing is working to determine a long-term presence in space, “which it seeks to perform by first dominating the cislunar domain” – the space between Earth and the moon.
Noted by the Commission is U.S. military belief that cislunar space is a vital domain, one that permits the USA to put its national security space assets beyond low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit and to determine infrastructure that may enable long-term presence on the moon and elsewhere.
Citing several experts, the report points to primary security concerns of China’s lunar exploration program that center on use of orbits across the moon, akin to the Earth-moon L2 Lagrange point. Placing a satellite in L2 halo orbit could allow China to fly to the far side of the moon and attack U.S. satellites in geosynchronous orbits, in line with an analyst cited within the document.
Militarily pointless
But not all experts agree. “It is not very useful to make use of the moon in any military purposes,” said Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor in astropolitics and space warfare on the University of Leicester’s School of History, Politics, and International Relations in the UK.
Bowen authored “Original Sin – Power, Technology and War in Outer Space,” (Hurst, 2022), detailing a world order shaped by spacepower and the peril of space warfare.
“I believe the moon goes to get busy. Then, yes, there will probably be need for more infrastructure to support and coordinate traffic, communications bandwidth, and perhaps actual compliance with the [United Nations] Outer Space Treaty as interpreted by whoever is doing the monitoring,” Bowen told Space.com. “However the moon is militarily pointless, and I hope it stays that way.”
Political optics
That said, having military organizations, akin to DARPA, develop emerging technologies for the moon could possibly be sending a incorrect message. It is a matter of “political optics” and “political messaging,” Bowen said.
“The danger is ending up making a self-fulfilling prophesy by bringing in possible military fears and interests within the moon. That just might prod the Chinese to reply in an identical way,” added Bowen. If NASA is taking the lead or private firms on the space agency’s behalf, “then it’s more obviously civilian in nature. You avoid loads of unnecessary militarizing risk,” Bowen said. “Most individuals wish to keep the moon free from conflict if possible.”
As for the U.S. Space Force turning its attention moonward, Bowen sees that as a distraction. “The Space Force has loads of work to do in Earth orbit and supporting U.S. military forces on Earth. That is where the Space Force focus must be,” he said.
Where the Chinese do present actual threats to U.S. interests “is on Earth, in orbit, not on the moon,” Bowen concluded.
The brand new abnormal
Daniel Deudney is a professor of political science and diplomacy at Johns Hopkins University. He can also be writer of Dark Skies: Space Expansionism, Planetary Geopolitics, and the Ends of Humanity (Oxford University Press, 2020).
As for military interest in cislunar space and the moon, “I believe it’s the ‘latest abnormal,’ back to the worst of the 1950’s,” Deudney told Space.com
Deudney said he was struck by NASA’s moonbase enterprise, the notion of extracting water from shaded craters for rocket fuels. Indeed, that vision is on the shady side without independent experts taking a look at the feasible cost and consequences of such an enterprise.
“It’s extremely dubious on its face and vastly costlier than they think or are telling anyone,” Deudney said. “It strikes me as an insane use of dollar resources to squeeze just a little water out of those craters. We face growing droughts from climate change here on Earth.”
But Deudney said he isn’t against some sort of Antarctic-type base on the moon, one which’s established for scientific purposes.
“It needs to be a world project, the subsequent step from the International Space Station. Let’s hold in abeyance resource claims and various exclusion zones as set out within the Artemis Accords. We needs to be doing science and a scientific surveying of the moon jointly with other nations before we start extracting anything,” Deudney said.
Ownership of the moon
“Something strange is occurring concerning the unwarranted attention on the moon,” said Paul Szymanski of the Space Strategies Center, co-author of a forthcoming book, “The Battle Beyond: Fighting and Winning the Coming War in Space” (Amplify Publishing, 2024).
“For my entire 50 12 months profession nobody I knew was particularly inquisitive about it [the moon], but now there’s extreme attention,” Szymanski said.
Within the 1970’s NASA asked the Air Force in the event that they wanted a base on the moon, they usually said no, Szymanski told Space.com. “Yet now, I personally know of firms planning on providing cellular phone service on the moon and the Air Force Research Lab is developing several programs, akin to space surveillance for the far side of the moon. None of this is sensible, unless there’s another not publicly known factor that has modified everyone’s attitudes.”
Szymanski said he theorizes that China will abrogate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty just before landing their first astronauts on the moon.
“They are going to then declare ownership of all the moon, just like the Pope did centuries ago declaring Spain and Portugal owned all the Western hemisphere. Good luck defending all of that!”