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We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because there's stuff there we want.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Stephanie Hughes.

NASA's Artemis II mission, which will send humans around the moon for the first time in over

five decades, could launch as early as next month. This is part of a larger campaign to establish

a long-term presence on the moon. The eventual goal is to prepare for human spaceflight to Mars.

Meanwhile, China also has a goal of landing humans

on the moon by 2030, setting up a kind of modern space race. One reason for the rush, it's a little

bit like a game of finders keepers. I talked about this with Sadia Picatin, who teaches about

space law and policy at the University of Washington. We have some good understanding of where the space resources are.

So there is something of a first mover advantage to getting to those resources first.

But there are other factors and other technologies at play that may mitigate some of that competition.

What rules govern who can claim what on the moon?

So technically, under space law, international space law, nobody can stake any claim to any territory on the moon.

But what we can do is the commercial exploitation of space resources. And the United States has been leading something called the Artemis Accords,

which is non-legally binding principles, guidelines for how that may come about.

And so far, it has about 61 countries around the world.

They sort of agree on the basic rules of the game.

So you can't own the moon, but you can take things from it?

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