Washington (AFP)

The US space agency on Thursday awarded contracts to four companies that offered to collect samples of lunar soil for prices ranging from $ 1 to $ 15,000, documents that are primarily intended to set a legal precedent for the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources. by the private sector.

"It's quite extraordinary that we can buy lunar regolith from four companies for a total of $ 25,001," said Phil McAlister, head of this program at NASA.

In exchange for the sums, the companies - Lunar Outpost ($ 1), ispace Japan and ispace Europe ($ 5,000 each) and Masten Space Systems ($ 15,000) - will have the mission to manage to land on the Moon, to recover a few tens or hundreds of grams of samples, to photograph them and to carry out a transfer of ownership on the spot in favor of NASA.

The companies will make their collection robots travel on already planned moon landing missions, funded by entities other than NASA, and which will land in 2022 and 2023.

The return of the samples is not expected at this stage, as the main objective is in fact to initiate a new phase of space exploration, where the private sector is participating to find minerals and other resources, such as water. , to live and produce fuel outside the Earth - all while being legally protected.

"It is very important to set the precedent that private sector entities can extract and take these resources," said Mike Gold, senior NASA official in charge of international relations.

“It will set a precedent internally and externally,” he said.

The United States wants to set a precedent because there is no international consensus on property rights outside the Earth.

Rival space powers Russia and China diverge from Washington.

The 1967 space treaty is vague: it only inscribes the prohibition of any "national appropriation by proclamation of sovereignty, neither by use, nor by any other means".

The Americans do not actually want to plant a flag in new territory.

But the United States has said in what it dubbed the Artemis Accords that it reserves the right to create "safe zones" to protect activities on a celestial body.

Artemis is the program to return to the Moon, with two astronauts planned on site in 2024.

Mike Gold assured that these new activities would be done "in compliance with the space treaty".

"It is important that America is a leader not only technologically, but also politically," he said.

© 2020 AFP