Scientists are also concerned that this announcement is a politically-motivated move in the new international race to the Moon.<\/p>\n
“It seems that we’re going back into the old first space race days of competition, which, from a scientific perspective, is a little bit disappointing and concerning,” says Dr Barber.<\/p>\n
“Competition can create innovation, but if there’s a narrower focus on national interest and on establishing ownership, then you can lose sight of the bigger picture which is exploring the solar system and beyond,” he adds.<\/p>\n
Mr Duffy’s comments about the potential for China and Russia to potentially “declare a keep-out zone” on the Moon appear to be referring to an agreement called the Artemis accords.<\/p>\n
In 2020 seven nations signed the agreement to establish principles on how countries should co-operate on the Moon’s surface. <\/p>\n
The accords include so-called safety zones to be established around operations and assets that counties build on the Moon.<\/p>\n
“If you build a nuclear reactor or or any kind of base on the moon, you can then start claiming that you have a safety zone around it, because you have equipment there,” says Dr Barber.<\/p>\n
“To some people, this is tantamount to, “we own this bit of the moon, we’re going to operate here and and you can’t come in”,” he explains.<\/p>\n
Dr Barber points out that there are hurdles to overcome before placing a nuclear reactor on the Moon for humans to use.<\/p>\n
Nasa’s Artemis 3 aims to send humans to the lunar surface in 2027, but it has faced a series of set-backs and uncertainty around funding.<\/p>\n
“If you’ve got nuclear power for a base, but you’ve got no way of getting people and equipment there, then it’s not much use,” he added.<\/p>\n
“The plans don’t appear very joined up at the moment,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists are also concerned that this announcement is a politically-motivated move in the new international race to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-45817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}