After announcing an international coalition to build and operate a moon base in April, China has attracted numerous nations to sign the International Lunar Research Station initiative (ILRS) which is seen by space policy analysts as an alternative choice to the White House’s Artemis Accords.

Visionary scientists and policymakers might see the Artemis Accords as planting the first seed of a kind of global human vision for space colonization; something like a UN for the stars. More cynical ones would probably see it more like NATO, namely a way for the US to ensconce allied economies into a muscular unipolar organization for the exploitation of the solar system. As above, so below.

In either case, and similar to the Belt and Road Initiative, the Chinese have attracted many launch-capable nations outside the NATO blanket to sign the ILRS, including Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Malaysia, and the Asia-Pacific Space Cooperation Organization, which also includes Turkey, Thailand, Peru, Iran, Bangladesh, and Mongolia. As above, so below.

The Chinese National Space Administration hopes to wrap up memoranda of understanding with member states and set out more concrete rights and privileges for all those seeking to collaborate on the establishment of a permanent lunar presence in the 2030s.

“We welcome the participation of developed countries such as the United States and European countries. We also hope that BRICS countries and some underdeveloped African countries will join us,” Wu Weiren, director of China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory, told CCTV ahead of China’s national space day on April 24th.

Similarly, the Artemis Accords welcome any potential signatory—they are available in Russian, Chinese, and Arabic languages after all—though any attempt by China to do so would almost invariably be perceived in the US Congress as a spy mission. Section 11 of the Artemis Accords lays out all the ways in which any signatory should deconflict space activities, using the 1967 Outer Space Treaty of the UN as a baseline for how to do so.

But as they have done before, the Chinese would almost certainly suggest that the US repeatedly ignores foundational UN treaties to which they have signed, for example during the invasion of Iraq, or the repeated use of economic blockades on countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Yemen, Syria, and others who do not comply with demands from Washington, both of which violate UN laws under treaties the UN has signed.

Space News reports that there’s nothing in theory that would stop ILRS and Artemis from developing simultaneously. Indeed, there are nations who have signed both agreements (Pakistan and UAE) and there may be more. Several commercial nations have become adept at balancing political pressure from Washington and Beijing, and may see the two space organizations as two opportunities to learn and trade.

“The precedents both ILRS and Artemis may set for the future governance of the moon within the Outer Space Treaty (OST) framework make it increasingly attractive for many smaller states or emerging space powers to sign up to one or both lunar projects and have a say in the moon’s political future, and that of the OST’s implementation as the Moon gets busier,” Bleddyn Bowen, an associate professor at the University of Leicester with a focus on international relations and space governance, told Space News.

Terming what the ILRS initiative actually is, the signatory nations will contribute via a massive space campus in China’s Hefei Province to 5 future missions to establish infrastructure for communications, astronomical observation, nuclear energy, and robotic exploration on our Moon, with the hope of arriving there in the 2030s.

Preceding the ILRS base will be a future Chinese space mission entitled Chang’e-8 that will test 3D-printing technology for the construction of a shelter on the Moon.

A vision for the future

“Many of these countries are not surprisingly leaning towards the ILRS as they are already partnered with China in space projects or on other economic and technological fronts, and China’s leadership do not want ILRS to be seen as less internationally-oriented than Artemis,” Bowen adds.

It seems likely that these two concepts of the future use of space will prevail over the old UN treaty, which doesn’t permit individual nations, corporations, or associations of any kind to lay claim on any celestial bodies for economic use; things which both Artemis and ILRS do include provisions for.

Critical analysis and comparison of Artemis with the OST have noted several uneasy breaks with tradition, for example the preservation of historical sites in outer space provided for in the Artemis Accords contradicts the wording in the OST that all the Moon is the domain of all mankind, and cannot be partitioned in any way.

Similar arguments have been made regarding proposed “safety zones” around Artemis landing sights and base areas—ostensibly for safety concerns, but which would nevertheless create a de facto US province on the Moon within such a safe zoon.

In the economic and development picture, the US, as well as other spacefaring nations like the UAE, and even Luxemburg, have passed laws outlining how private companies can legally create space-based enterprises.

“Not all countries, however, as yet agree to this approach,” wrote Frans von der Dunk, a Professor of Space Law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in 2020. “Basically arguing that the international character of outer space as a realm and of its exploration and use as ‘the province of all mankind’ means that also any resources in that realm are the common property of all States together”.

“They claim that unilateral approval of commercial exploitation is not in compliance with the Outer Space Treaty, and that only an international regime, notably – presumably – including an international licensing system, could legitimize such commercial exploitation”.

This will presumably be argued about on the UN floor, with nations who risk being out-competed by spacefaring neighbors arguing for the space-as-a-realm interpretation, and those who stand to gain from it arguing for an updated treaty, until the number of the latter grows larger than the former.

When that time comes they have two options to take advantage of the bounty of space—the Artemis Accords, or ILRS.

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