Phys.org November 23, 2020
Numerous missions planned for the next decade are likely to target a handful of small sites of interest on the Moon’s surface, creating risks of crowding and interference at these locations. Regions richest in physical resources could also be uniquely suited to settlement and commerce. Such sites of interest are both few and small. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, UK) surveyed the implications for different kinds of mission and find that the diverse actors pursuing incompatible ends at these sites could soon crowd and interfere with each other, leaving almost all actors worse off. Locations of interest to science, notably for astronomy, include the Peaks of Eternal Light, the coldest of the cold traps and smooth areas on the far side. Without proactive measures to prevent these outcomes, lunar actors are likely to experience significant losses of opportunity. They highlight the legal, policy and ethical ramifications and present a path toward managing lunar crowding and interference grounded in ethical and practical near-term considerations…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Overlaid on this image the moon are some of the hotspots identified for cosmology telescopes on the moon… Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/DLR/ASU; Overlay: M. Elvis, A. Krosilowski, T. Milligan