President Trump’s latest executive order has the Russian government furious. On Monday, the president signed an order that allows and encourages the United States to harvest minerals on the moon, Mars, and other outer space bodies and objects.
In fact, it emboldens both the federal government and private companies to find and gather resources off-planet earth, and directs the State Department to garner international support for the practice.
The Washington Examiner reported:
This order shows the U.S. promoting a different path than the 18 nations who signed the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, an international pact also known as the Moon Agreement, which said all resources from space fall under international jurisdiction. The U.S. did not join the Moon Agreement and objects to it being used as international law.
Instead, the Trump administration claimed the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, which 109 nations and the U.S. signed, allows for any country to harvest minerals found in space.
“Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons,” the order reads. “Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law.”
The order requires the State Department to “encourage international support” for resource exploration by individual countries and the private sector. The department will also consider international agreements with other nations that allow for the “safe and sustainable” use of celestial minerals.
In a statement about the order, Trump said, “After braving the vast unknown and discovering the new world, our forefathers did not only merely sail home — and, in some cases, never to return. They stayed, they explored, they built, they guided, and through that pioneering spirit, they imagined all of the possibilities that few dared to dream.”
Scott Pace, the deputy assistant to the president and executive secretary of the U.S. National Space Council, added, “As America prepares to return humans to the moon and journey on to Mars, this executive order establishes U.S. policy toward the recovery and use of space resources, such as water and certain minerals, in order to encourage the commercial development of space.”
Congress has already approved private companies using minerals from the moon in legislation passed in 2015. NASA is slated to return to the moon in 2024.
Eurativ.com With Reuters reported on the Russian response:
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, accused Donald Trump on Tuesday (7 April) of creating a basis to take over other planets by signing an executive order outlining US policy on commercial mining in space.
The executive order, which Roscosmos said damaged the scope for international cooperation in space, was signed on Monday.
It said the United States would seek to negotiate “joint statements and bilateral and multilateral arrangements with foreign states regarding safe and sustainable operations for the public and private recovery and use of space resources”.
It said US citizens should have the right to engage in such activity and that “outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons.”
Roscosmos said the order put the United States at odds with the notion of space belonging to all humanity.
“Attempts to expropriate outer space and aggressive plans to actually seize territories of other planets hardly set the countries (on course for) fruitful cooperation,” its statement said.
Relations between Russia and the United States are at post-Cold War lows, but cooperation on space has continued despite an array of differences over everything from Ukraine to accusations of election meddling.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “any kind of attempt to privatize space in one form or another – and I find it difficult to say now whether this can be seen as an attempt to privatize space – would be unacceptable.”
Yet, it’s happening.
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