Could Kickstarter-funded Lunar Mission One be the UN’s first space mission?
|
Version 0 of 1. If it works, Lunar Mission One will be a game changer. Instead of relying on governmental organisations such as the European Space Agency (ESA) or Nasa to fund science, Lunar Mission One is a privately-funded space science mission. Anyone from individuals to governments will be able to buy into the mission. It aims to land at the moon’s south pole in 2024 and drill into the lunar interior for answers about how the whole solar system formed. Once the science is performed, it will bury an archive of human life, contributed by its supporters, beneath the lunar surface. It is estimated that this archive will remain untarnished by natural forces for a billion years. Lunar Mission One was announced to the public last November in the wake of the ESA’s historic comet landing, and raised almost £700,000 on Kickstarter to begin development. Crucially, it was developed by a number of high-profile UK planetary scientists, which explains why the science case was so compelling. Yet, as impressive as the Kickstarter money is, it will not go far towards actually building the mission, let alone launching it into space. Lunar Missions Ltd, the operating company set up by David Iron to administer Lunar Mission One on behalf of the not-for-profit Lunar Missions Trust, which he also founded, estimates that to get to the moon will cost $1.5 billion. To find this considerable extra funding, Lunar Missions Ltd. are proposing an international public private partnership to tap directly into the global interest in exploring space. Space exploration is already littered with rhetoric about international missions. Right from the early days of Apollo, we were told that the Americans went to the moon ‘for all mankind’. This was clearly a lie even at the time. The Americans went to the moon to win a cold war clash with the Soviet Union by demonstrating who had the better technology. Since then, international space projects have been undertaken because they are too expensive or demanding for an individual country. The International Space Station was Space Station Freedom, a solely American endeavour, until budget over-runs almost brought the Nasa project to its knees in the 1990s. In every international space negotiation, there is a political undercurrent. This can be about protecting intellectual or technological property, being determined that a particularly valuable innovation is developed by a certain company, or simply ensuring that a certain percentage of the money is spent in a particular country. As such, it may be that the space agencies involved do not always get the best value for money, nor undertake the best of the available missions. Free of political interference, a commercial company could simply buy from whoever in the world can supply the best product at the best price. This could turn the long-held dream of the international exploration of space into reality. In May, Lunar Mission One became a top sponsor of the World Space Week Association, an organisation that works on behalf of the United Nations to promote World Space Week. This takes place every year between 4-10 October and celebrates the benefits that space science has brought to the world. A further sign of this growing association is that this afternoon at the United Nations office in Vienna, David Iron is addressing the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) about Lunar Mission One. Nothing demonstrates the international aspirations of Iron’s project more clearly than this. It also raises an intriguing possibility. COPUOS is administered by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. The Office is designed to operate within the UN Secretariat to promote international cooperation in the peaceful uses of outer space. What could be a better flagship than an international science mission to the Moon funded by individual citizens from around the world, coming together to achieve a common goal? In short, could this afternoon be the initial tentative step towards the first ever United Nations space mission? Stuart Clark is the author of The Unknown Universe (Head of Zeus). Find him on Twitter. |