The space race of the 1960s was about which country would put boots on the moon first. While some of the frontrunners are the same, today’s space race is quite different: Today it’s about who might build on the moon first.

It’s been more than 50 years since a human set foot on the moon. Now China and the United States are working toward habitable long-term structures.
But why would we want to build on the moon?

  Listen to the Deep Dive

Basically, it’s a first-come, first-served situation. No one owns the moon — there is no border divide, no land-ownership dispute and no indigenous aliens to bargain with (that we know of) — it’s all just there for the taking. So, it only makes sense that everyone wants to take it.

Though the Outer Space Treaty states no one owns the moon and no one can own parts of the moon, the rules for private companies are ambiguous. In 2020 the U.S. Trump administration produced an executive order that allows private companies to mine on the moon.

IMAGE: Darya Kawa Mirza

Charting a journey through the history of lunar water exploration

For centuries, scientists have theorized about whether water exists on the moon. From bountiful lunar oceans to arid, thirsty regolith, theories of water on the lunar surface have been extreme. Today there is no longer need for theory as the lunar surface provides answers to the question: Can I get a drink of water on the moon? Follow the science as it reveals how early theories led to what we know today: Read more›››

1645: First map of the moon is produced by Dutch astronomer Michael van Langren, suggesting the dark holes on the moon visible to the naked eye are oceans.

1892: American astronomer William Pickering suggests that because the moon has no atmosphere, any water would evaporate.

1960s: Scientists theorize the extreme cold of parts of the moon that never see the sun could be home to frozen water.

1969-’72 Regolith collected by the Apollo mission turns up devoid of water.

2008: Re-examination of lunar soil samples reveals H2O molecules.

2018: A team of scientists confirms ice rests inside craters at both lunar poles. The temperature here never rises above -250 degrees Fahrenheit.

2020: NASA confirms water on the sunlit surfaces as well.

2023: China mission discovers tiny glass beads containing water in lunar soil where meteorites smash into the moon. There are billions, perhaps trillions, on the surface, each no bigger than the width of two hairs.‹‹‹ Read less

And now that we know the moon isn’t made of cheese, players are hard at work to get pieces of what it is made of.

It must be something spectacular for them to want it so badly, right?

Sorry to disappoint, but with the exception of a handful of new minerals, it’s really not much different from what we have here on Earth.

“The Earth and the moon are made out of the same stuff because the solar system was made out of the same stuff,” says Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science and astrobiology at Birbeck University of London.

  Locally sourced materials

The problem is that stuff here on Earth doesn’t help us build structures in space, and that‘s the long-term plan: Build on the moon without carting materials all the way from Earth or robbing Earth of its resources. “Gradually increasing access to lunar resources may help bootstrap a space-based economy from which the world economy, and possibly also the world’s environment, will ultimately benefit,” Crawford says.

Don’t forget about the cost, says Sean Swei, director of the Space Technology & Innovation Center at Khalifa University. “Here, the cost is most likely measured by the amount of energy needed to perform mining and conversion. For example, sending 1 liter of water to the moon costs about U.S.$1.2 million. If we could come up with a much more effective launch vehicle, the cost could drop to U.S.$10,000. Hence, large payload delivery to the moon might still be reasonable, though for sustainability we’d still want to enable in-situ resource utilization.”

  Progress is underway

NASA in 2022 announced it hired four private companies to mine the lunar surface. The first is Lunar Outpost, a company with a mission to settle humans on the moon. Lunar Outpost charged NASA a dollar for the private company’s rover to pick up a bit of lunar soil, take a snapshot of it and transfer ownership to NASA.

This marked the beginning of commercializing lunar minerals. It also marked the first action in NASA’s plan to build a long-term dwelling for humans on the lunar surface by 2030

NASA’s Artemis program launched its first phase to test its new mega-spaceship in 2022. It was uncrewed — by humans — and it successfully returned to Earth with all of its mannequins and stuffed toy Shaun the Sheep unharmed.

Artemis II will take astronauts on a junket around the moon, and Artemis III will be the boots-on-the-moon finale with an ultimate goal of establishing habitable bases.

  Printing a place to live

But for those bases they’ll need building materials. And they’ll use modern technology to produce them. This is where 3D printing comes in.

NASA has toyed in the past with 3D printing on the International Space Station, using lunar regolith for research purposes. But in 2022 the agency announced it had awarded a U.S.$60 million contract to tech-construction company Olympus to construct a 3D laser printer that will build on the moon and Mars.

Meanwhile, Khalifa University is working on autonomous/robotic assembly of large habitat infrastructures on the moon. This race is on.

The Chinese space program also aims to mine the moon for exploration purposes. And while building a safe, sustainable shelter on the moon is paramount for all players, so is the discovery of possible energy sources.

China, too, is pursuing 3D printing. According to a 2023 Reuters report, China is hoping to use the technology to 3D print a lunar station. Its 2028 mission has a robot tasked with constructing a brick from moon minerals.

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CAPTION: This photo might look a bit strange, yet those are the actual colors of the lunar surface (with a bit of a push to make them distinguishable and more visible). Those colors come from the minerals found there. Areas rich in iron, for example, have an orange tint, while areas rich in titanium have a blue tint. IMAGE: Ritesh Biswas

The United States and Russia have discovered five new minerals on the moon. But China’s 2020 lunar mission resulted in the discovery of a sixth: a phosphorus mineral named Changesite-(Y). On Earth, phosphate plays an essential role in plant growth. While it is not known what the phosphate from the barrel-shaped moon crystals will reveal, it could be a possible energy source for those long-term lunar visits.

Scientists in China analyzing the Changesite-(Y) crystal determined it contains an isotope of helium-3, which is scarce on Earth.

  A better nuclear material?

This discovery could be an energy game-changer, says Gerald Kulcinski, director emeritus of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The amount of energy in the helium-3 on the moon could produce all the electricity needed on the Earth for about 1,000 years,” he says. Astronauts from the U.S. Apollo program discovered in 1970 that helium-3 is in almost every sample brought back from the moon, Kulcinski says.

Helium-3 is effused by the sun and transported through the solar system by solar winds. But Earth’s magnetic field repels helium-3; only a small amount penetrates the atmosphere.

The moon, however, has about 1 million metric tons of the material, Kulcinski tells KUST Review.

The moon’s resources could be a proverbial goldmine for nuclear energy. Experts say 40 grams (eight teaspoons) of helium-3 could provide the energy equivalent of 5,000 tons of coal. Because helium-3 is not radioactive itself, it could provide safer and cleaner nuclear energy.

“He-3 is one of the advanced fusion fuels that can release enormous amounts of energy without the drawbacks of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels or large amounts of radioactive waste from fission reactors,” Kulcinski says.

  What else is there?

So if there’s energy resources in abundance on the moon, surely, you might think, there are many other untapped assets there too. Sadly, you’d be wrong, says Birbeck University’s Crawford.

Though much of the moon is unexplored, Crawford says he believes there won’t be any significant future finds to benefit us on Earth. He contends this race is about what we can use while in space — whether it’s a lunar station or a Jeff Bezos hotel in Earth’s low orbit — and the media hype of the race is geo-politics at play.

“It’s interesting and important from a scientific point of view, and though there are only 10 locations on the surface of the moon from which we’ve actually collected samples and analyzed them, I doubt there are going to be any big surprises that are going to be relevant,” he tells KUST Review.