The race to find space resources is on. But who gets to decide how they are used? 

When Neil Armstrong took his small step onto the lunar surface in July 1969, he left footsteps on a desert. Blasted by sunlight and exposed to a vacuum where even frozen water can evaporate, the lunar soil he walked on and returned to Earth with was completely dry. 

But more recent discoveries have turned our decades-old understanding of the moon on its head. 

NASA’s LCROSS mission found evidence of potentially large amounts of ice buried in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar south pole in 2009. And, in summer 2024, researchers using China’s Chang’e 5 probe found traces of water locked up in salty deposits elsewhere. But will this water be practically useful – and who gets to decide what to do with it? 

The coming years will see crewed moon landings, and perhaps even a permanent moon base, as a first step towards long-term ambitions to explore Mars and the solar system. This sits in the context of a new space race: NASA and its partners, including the UK, Japan and the European Space Agency, are racing China for dominance of deep space. 

Water - to drink, to produce food and to produce fuel - is critical for these visions. 

Water to preserve the life of astronauts and of food crops is a tractable problem. Our bodies contain as much water as we need for the rest of our lives - if we manage to recycle it all. We haven’t completely cracked this problem, but we’re surprisingly close: the International Space Station recovers about 98% of the water on board. 

But rocket fuel - made from oxygen and hydrogen extracted from water - isn’t a renewable resource. You burn it once and it’s ejected into space. And you need a lot.

The physics of using the moon as a springboard to Mars and the asteroids makes sense - the gravity is one-sixth of Earth’s, making launches far easier. But the economics only make sense if that fuel can be manufactured from water found on the moon.

Thanks to LCROSS and Chang’e 5, we now know it’s there. But accessing it is the next challenge - and that will be down to chemical engineering. 

We don’t yet know how to use lunar water: it’s mixed up with highly abrasive lunar soil and contaminated with chemicals. And the lunar environment - freezing cold, in a vacuum and with low gravity - rules out the purification technologies we use on Earth.

Unsurprisingly, space agencies have taken note. In June 2024, NASA announced the winners of a competition on technologies to excavate and transform the mixture of dust and ice found in permanently shadowed craters. The UK and Canadian Space Agencies - with Nesta enterprise Challenge Works as a partner - are currently supporting 18 teams in the Aqualunar Challenge, competing to develop technology to purify lunar ice. 

There is growing and broad interest in other space resources too. That includes living off the land in space, for instance by making concrete from moon rock, as well as bringing precious materials such as iridium from asteroids back to Earth. 

The European Space Agency, jointly with the Luxembourg Space Agency, now has a dedicated institution, the European Space Resources Innovation Centre, focused solely on advancing the space resources sector.

The technologies developed in this race for lunar materials could change life on Earth. Just like digital cameras came from the space programme, the technology designed to purify water in the unbelievably harsh conditions on the moon is likely to find eager customers on our own planet. 

In a time of increasing water scarcity - and increasing scrutiny of water pollution - a compact, low-energy, rugged water purification device would surely come in handy.

However, exploiting space resources is not just about engineering. Space isn’t just a physical near-vacuum, it’s a legal and regulatory near-vacuum too. 

The governing framework for space is a 1967 treaty that predates even the Apollo landings. It’s only 2,200 words long, focusing on the behaviour of states, on exploration, sovereignty and on military questions. And while that’s still relevant framing for the political rivalry between the US and China, the Outer Space Treaty says nothing about how to govern and regulate a space economy. 

How do we feel about mining in space? About Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos dominating the moon’s economy as they do Earth’s? About who should benefit from natural resources outside our planet? 

The starting gun in a new space race has been fired. The UK Aqualunar Challenge winners will be announced in March 2025. NASA’s Artemis II mission could fly around the moon as soon as April 2026. The first moon landings in five decades will follow a year later.

We’ll soon have to figure out what the answers are. Will we like them?