Russia recently launched its first moon landing spacecraft in 47 years. The launch comes at a time of competition among major powers, including the United States, China, and India, to discover more about the resources found on the moon.
Russia said it would launch more lunar missions and explore the possibility of a joint Russian-Chinese manned mission and even a lunar base. NASA has ruled on the case of lunar mining and the "gold rush", a situation in which many people rush to a place where something valuable has been discovered.
Why are the great powers so interested in what's up there?
Moon
The moon is about 384,400 kilometers from our planet.
Current thinking is that the moon formed when a large object crashed into the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Some of the debris from the crash merged to form the moon.
Temperatures are diverse on the moon. In full sun they go up to 127 degrees Celsius, while in the dark they go down to about -173 degrees Celsius. The moon's exosphere provides no protection from radiation from the sun.
The first discovered water on the moon was in 2008 by the Indian Chandrayaan-1 mission, which detected hydroxyl molecules scattered across the moon's surface. The molecules were most commonly found at the poles, NASA says.
Water is necessary for human life and can also be a source of hydrogen and oxygen. These elements can be used as rocket fuel.
It is likely that the moon also has helium-3.
Helium-3 is a type of helium that is rare on Earth, but NASA reports estimates of one million tons on the moon.
Helium-3 could provide nuclear power in a fusion reactor. But since helium-3 is not radioactive, it would not produce hazardous waste, says the European Space Agency.
Also, present on the moon are rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are used in smartphones, computers, and other special technologies. Boeing, a very large US aerospace company, says the moon may have rare-earth metals like scandium, yttrium, and lanthanides.
Moon Mining
But it's not entirely clear how mining on the moon would work.
Some kind of infrastructure would have to be established on the moon. Conditions on the moon mean robots would have to do most of the hard work, although water on the moon would allow for long-term human presence.
The laws governing lunar mining are unclear and full of loopholes.
The United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1966 says that no nation can claim dominion over the moon. Furthermore, the treaty says that space exploration must be done for the good of all countries.
But lawyers say it's unclear whether or not a private company could claim dominance over a part of the moon.
"Space mining is subject to relatively little existing policy or governance," The RAND Corporation, a research group, said on its website last year.
The UN's 1979 Moon Agreement says that no part of the moon "shall be owned by any State, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity, or by any natural person."
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