Geopolitical Considerations of Rocket Exhaust Blowing Lunar Soil, and Efforts to Mitigate the Problem
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Dr. Philip Metzger
Research Professor
University of Central Florida
The Outer Space Treaty requires all parties operating on the moon to give due regard to other nations’ activities. However, it will be impossible to avoid damaging each others’ hardware due to the effects of rocket exhaust blowing dust up to and faster than lunar escape velocity. Because of uncertainties in the physics, it is difficult to define a reasonable size for “safety zones” around sensitive hardware like telescopes, and this can potentially be abused to claim excessively large regions on the Moon as de facto national territory, sidestepping another provision of the treaty to prohibits territorial claims. It will also be difficult to avoid damaging hardware in orbit around the Moon, possible even in high orbits. There are several ways to try mitigating this problem, including international agreements on how much damage we can cause to each others’ mission, requirements on building landing pads, and coordinating lunar landings with the timing of spacecraft orbits.
Host: Dr. Mark Marley