Who owns the Moon? A new space race means it could be up for grabs

One major change is that modern-day Moon missions are not just the projects of nations – companies are competing, too.

In January, a US commercial mission called Peregrine announced it was taking human ashes, DNA samples and a sports drink, complete with branding, to the Moon. A fuel leak meant it never made it there, but it sparked debate about how delivering this eclectic inventory fitted in with the treaty’s principle that exploration should benefit all humanity.

“We’re starting to just send stuff up there just because we can. There’s no sort of rhyme or reason anymore,” says Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer and founder of For All Moonkind, an organisation that seeks to protect the Apollo landing sites. “Our Moon is within reach and now we’re starting to abuse it,” she says.

But even if lunar private enterprise is on the increase, nation states still ultimately remain the key players in all this. Sa’id Mostehsar, director of the London Institute of Space Policy and Law, says any company needs to be authorised to go into space by a state, which will be limited by the international treaties.

There’s still a great deal of prestige to be had by joining the elite club of Moon landers. After their successful missions, India and Japan could very much claim to be global space players.

And a nation with a successful space industry can bring a big boost to the economy through jobs, innovation.

But the Moon race offers an even bigger prize: its resources.

While the lunar terrain looks rather barren, it contains minerals, including rare earths, metals like iron and titanium – and helium too, which is used in everything from superconductors to medical equipment.

Estimates for the value of all this vary wildly, from billions to quadrillions. So it’s easy to see why some see the Moon as a place to make lots of money. However, it’s also important to note that this would be a very long-term investment – and the tech needed to extract and return these lunar resources is a some way off.

In 1979, an international treaty declared that no state or organisation could claim to own the resources there. But it wasn’t popular – only 17 countries are party to it, and this does not include any countries who’ve been to the Moon, including the US.

In fact, the US passed a law in 2015 allowing its citizens and industries to extract, use and sell any space material.

“This caused tremendous consternation amongst the international community,” Michelle Hanlon told me. “But slowly, others followed suit with similar national laws.” These included Luxembourg, the UAE, Japan and India.

The resource that could be most in demand is a surprising one: water.

“When the first Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts were analysed, they were thought to be completely dry,” explains Sara Russell, professor of planetary sciences at the Natural History Museum.

“But then a kind of revolution happened about 10 years ago, and we found out that they’ve got little traces of water in them trapped in phosphate crystals.”