Lunar attic (4/3/23)

Good morning. Today, we’re announcing some personnel changes aboard the Payload rocketship! Jacqueline is stepping in as interim managing editor to oversee our roster of staff and freelancers around the world. (Hit us up if you want to join our growing stable of writers.) And tomorrow, you’ll get to hear the first Pathfinder episode hosted by Mo, who will be at the helm of the podcast going forward.

We also have poll results from last week! Stephanie Wilson, an astronaut who has visited the ISS three times, blew away the competition, with almost 40 percent of respondents saying she’s a shoe-in for the Artemis II crew. We’ll see who NASA actually picks for the prestigious mission today at 11am.

Today’s newsletter: 🏛️ Space ethics institute🌕 Moon to Mars🗓️ The week ahead

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The Ethics of Mementos on the Moon

For All Moonkind, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the moon landing sites, has launched the Institute on Space Law and Ethics to develop guidelines for responsible behavior in space.

The nitty-gritty: The institute will include a leadership board that will meet monthly as well as a group of fellows who will work on the project for two years outside of their normal job or school requirements, Michelle Hanlon, the founder of the nonprofit, told Payload. Their goal will be to draft a series of white papers that can consider ethical issues in space as quickly as the commercial sector is making advances, which often outpaces regulating bodies.

“I’m here at the UN. I love COPUOS,” she said from Vienna. “But they’re not going to produce the law in the time that we need it.”

First steps: One of the institute’s first white papers will focus on payload review, including for companies that deliver personal items to the Moon, Hanlon said. One example is Astrobotic, a space logistics company that charges individuals hundreds or thousands of dollars to send mementos like a family photo or wedding flower petal to the lunar surface in a MoonBox.

“The idea of sending anything you want to the Moon because you have the money to do so is alarming,” she said. “If in May, we send 10 little personal items, in May 2024 it’ll be 1,000, then 50,000. Then all of a sudden, the moon is this big attic for rich people.”

Hanlon said the institute is aiming to release its study of this issue within three weeks.

Other questions: Hanlon said the institute will also draft a manual on what obligations a nation has to its commercial actors in space. If, for example, another nation or business intentionally harmed a satellite or space station operated by an American company, it’s not clear what responsibility the military has to protect and respond—a question that has big implications for investors, too.

NASA Prepares for Life Off-World

Similar to For All Moonkind, NASA has also begun preparations for a permanent presence off Earth.

NASA opened the doors to its Moon to Mars Program Office last week and tapped Amit Kshatriya to take the helm. The office will oversee and coordinate NASA’s crewed lunar and Mars missions.

“The Moon to Mars Program Office will help prepare NASA to carry out our bold missions to the Moon and land the first humans on Mars,” said NASA chief Bill Nelson. “The golden age of exploration is happening right now, and this new office will help ensure that NASA successfully establishes a long-term lunar presence needed to prepare for humanity’s next giant leap to the Red Planet.”

The office will also handle complex legal, technical, and scientific challenges associated with sending humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars.

The Moon to Mars Pipeline

The office, which lawmakers ordered NASA to establish in the NASA Authorization Act of 2022, will manage:

• Landing astronauts on the Moon in 2025

• Supporting SLS, Orion, ground systems, human landing systems, spacesuits, and the lunar Gateway

• Setting up a sustainable permanent lunar presence by the end of the decade

• Planning a crewed mission to Mars

A giant leap to Mars: NASA’s return to the Moon is an intermediate step in the Artemis program’s ultimate goal of landing humans on Mars by 2040. The new office will leverage the knowledge from the lunar missions to build the roadmap to ensure a safe mission for humanity’s first trip to another planet.

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In Other News

• Space Pioneer, a Chinese rocket startup using liquid propellant, launched a demo mission of its Tianlong-2 rocket.

• SpaceX rolled Starship to its launch site ahead of a potential April launch.

• China’s space station crew completed a third spacewalk off Tiangong.

• Astrolab will launch its FLEX lunar rover aboard Starship as soon as 2026.

• South Korea plans to spend 874.2B won ($674M) on its domestic space industry and civil space program this year.

• The White House released its vision for establishing US preeminence in LEO.

• NASA was named the top place to work in the government for the 11th year.

The View from the Launchpad

Ten Tranche 0 SDA satellites lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 early Sunday morning.