(CN) — In 1959, the Soviet Union made history by successfully getting an unmanned spacecraft to the surface of the moon. It was the first human made object to ever reach another astronomical body outside of the Earth.
Before it made impact with the moon, creating the first human made crater on a celestial body, it took scientific measurements that were radio-transmitted back to Earth, and then scattered Soviet pennants on the moon’s surface.
Since then, hundreds of other manned and unmanned spacecrafts have been on the moon, leaving their own marks of human life, including flags, golf balls, pictures, religious texts, scientific equipment and even bags of astronaut poop.
With governments and private corporations tripping over themselves to try to make it back to the moon to possibly mine for precious metals, a group of anthropologist and geologists think it’s time to see humans as the dominant force shaping the moon’s environment, as we’ve done here on Earth, by proposing a new geological time period, the Lunar Anthropocene.
Published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Friday, the comment, which one of its authors described as similar to a peer reviewed opinion piece, makes the argument that just as humans have impacted the Earth’s environment — by migrating and inhabiting six out our seven continents, and reordering life on Earth, including our geology, ecosystems all over and the climate through resource extraction and other development — we’re currently underground our next major change, the peopling of the solar system, and the disturbance of the moon by people.
“We argue that as humans continue to expand their material footprint across the solar system, we must consider the human influence on other planetary bodies. Of particular importance is the Moon, as five countries and several private companies are preparing to visit the lunar surface within the next two years,” the authors write in the comment.
Because the moon has no atmosphere, its landscape changes much slower than Earth’s, they add. Which means that artifacts, footprints, rovertracks, and other signs of human life left on the moon remain preserved on its surface.
“We suggest that the recent history of space exploration has resulted in a measurable geomorphic signature of human activity on the lunar surface, marking a significant shift in the geologic history of the moon,” they write.
“Humans are the new business in town, or the new guys on the block,” said Justin Holcomb, a researcher at Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas, and the lead author of the comment.
Holcomb is an archeologist that studies human migration and distribution into new territories on Earth, like early migrants to Greece and the Americas, but it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that he became interested in the new space race, and how that is an extension of humanity’s long evolution and migration.
The point of the comment, Holcomb said, was just to get people thinking about how humans have and will affect our moon, and the wider solar system, especially as private companies eye space tourism, and mining on the moon.
Russia, China, India and the U.S. have all launched programs looking to study how to get their hands on resources geological surveys have shown exist on the moon, including deposits of rare metals for electronics, Helium-3 that could be used for developments in nuclear energy and water ice that could be used for rocket fuel.
In 2015, NASA referred to the prospects for resources on the moon as “the lunar gold rush.”
In a graphic on the agency’s website, they make note that in 1967 the United Nations passed a treaty preventing any country from claiming territory on the moon, but nothing in the treaty prevents a private company from claiming a piece of the moon.
In its current Artemis missions to the moon, NASA has collaborated with a number of private companies, like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Blue Origin, Nokia, Lockheed Martin, and General Motors to establish human colonization of the moon, and spur commercial development.
Holcomb hopes the comment will spark an interest in preserving lunar sights, since right now there are no regulations to prevent private companies from doing whatever they want on the moon.
“We’re not thinking about consequences, or what it could mean for the destruction of important historical sights,” he said, both on the moon and the less-disturbed surface of Mars. “I think we need to come to some kind of agreement to protect some sights on the moon before we go gung-ho with mining.”
Holcomb wants to continue studying how humans have affected the moon by coming up with ways to scientifically measure our impact, and maybe even get a formal declaration that we’re living in the Lunar Anthropocene. Only problem is, the International Commission on Stratigraphy — the scientific organization that among other things, establishes geological time units — has yet to decide ratify a specific date for the start of the Anthropocene period, with some suggesting that it could have started as late as only after World War II, or as early as the Agricultural Revolution.
A working group in the commission voted in 2021 to mark the mid-20th century as an important point in the Anthropocene, around the time when technological innovation exploded, and humans started constructing more powerful weapons of mass destruction, and spacecrafts to send to the moon, which also could mark the start of the Lunar Anthropocene, when the Soviet Luna 2 spacecraft crashed into the moon, Holcomb said.
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