Article II of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 reads: “Outer space, including the moon … is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” 

Translation: You can’t do a land grab. But you can conduct business on the moon. This week on the “Marketplace Morning Report,” we’re sharing multiple views on an emerging moon economy, how it might work, and if it’s even a good idea.

Christina Guidi is assistant general manager for space technology and transportation at a nonprofit entity called The Aerospace Corporation. Among the many projects it coordinates: how people and machines might communicate with each other on the moon, which is where Guidi and Marketplace’s David Brancaccio begin their chat. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Christina Guidi: What we are doing in partnership with NASA for their Artemis missions is creating LunaNet, which is essentially a communications and navigation architecture or system that allows us to communicate to rovers, as you mentioned. Also, to orbiting spacecraft and astronauts on the surface of the moon from Earth and to each other while they're on the lunar surface.

David Brancaccio: What about knowing where you are on the moon? I think some of my listeners will be ahead of me on this, right, but the GPS system that we use for our maps to work on our phone involves satellites around Earth. Probably not going to help you if you're on the moon.

Guidi: That's what this LunaNet is going to help do is actually provide that situational awareness of where you are, your position, and allow for navigation of the different assets and astronauts, as well. So it's a critical infrastructure that we need to put in place for Artemis to be sustainable.

Brancaccio: Yeah, I mean, the infrastructure would include — I don't know — structures, building on the moon. It's a lot cheaper if you can build with stuff that's actually already on the moon. And what that mainly is is that lunar dirt. I guess there's promise there of turning that into usable stuff?

Guidi: That's a key area. In situ resource utilization includes using the lunar regolith to construct structures, to convert the lunar regolith into water and air. There's a lot on the lunar surface that we could actually exploit. But you also have to think about, we have to have power, right? Where are we going to get our power from? We need robotic or mobility devices that would actually push the regolith around to create a landing pad.

Brancaccio: I mean, on the side facing the sun, you can use solar right?

Guidi: Absolutely, absolutely. But we're also looking at fission — fission nuclear power sources. So we've got several companies actually developing systems that can actually be deployed on the lunar surface just for that reason, so that it can actually operate during the lunar night.

Brancaccio: Chris, I got a favor, though, when you're in meetings coordinating a lunar economy to come, can you tell them not to make a mess? I mean, there are environmental concerns.

Guidi: Oh, absolutely. But one thing we need to consider looking forward is, how do we take the leftover materials or hardware and reuse it? So that would be a technology that needs to be developed across the community to repurpose material that is not used completely. That's something that needs to be considered in the future for sure.