When Luca Parmitano looks up at the Moon glowing in the night sky, his sense of wonder is mixed with personal anticipation. As an experienced member of the European astronaut corps, he stands a good chance of flying there — “the ultimate dream of someone like me who has trained as a test pilot.”

Parmitano hopes to take part in a mission in the late 2020s to build the Lunar Gateway, an international space station that will orbit the Moon and support the US-led Artemis programme to establish a human presence on the lunar surface. “Helping to construct the Moon’s first permanent infrastructure is what my whole career has been heading towards,” says the 47-year-old Italian.

For several decades after the Apollo landings, Earth left the Moon alone. Then a wave of uncrewed missions started in 2008-09 when Indian, Chinese and Japanese spacecraft reached the lunar surface. In 2013 China’s Chang’e-3 made a soft landing.

But the global race to the Moon really kicked off in 2017, when the US set up the Artemis programme. “Our goal is to learn how to live and operate on the Moon and do the science there,” says Jim Free, associate administrator of the US space agency Nasa, “so that, when we can, we go on to Mars. Our job is to build a sustainable blueprint for exploration of the solar system.”

Diagram showing the proposed flight plan for Artemis II, Nasa's first crewed test of the Space Launch System

Nasa is targeting the Moon’s South Pole — a prime destination for lunar missions because scientists believe the region’s craters are rich with ice, a vital water source. The location means that astronauts who step on to the moon for the first time since 1972 “will experience dreamlike images very different from the pictures taken by the Apollo crews more than 50 years ago,” Parmitano says. “The sun will always be very low on the horizon, with slanting light creating deep shadows and illuminated peaks.”

For all the investment, however, there is no guarantee that the new race for space will have a lasting impact. The best outcome by 2050, according to some space industry consultants, would be a permanent human presence, tourism and access to abundant energy and resources. But they also acknowledge that it could result in little more than sporadic scientific missions.

And for these grand ambitions to be realised, it will be necessary to navigate some complex geopolitics that include large state-funded space agencies that have an eye on eventually establishing lunar bases in similar places.

Nasa dominates the western world’s lunar activities, working with the Europeans, Japanese and others who are using collaboration to build up their own expertise. The agency’s target date for returning astronauts to the Moon is September 2026, two years after originally planned, though many experts expect further slippage.

Four people sit inside a small lunar module — European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano inside the Lunar I-Hab mock-up with engineers from Thales Alenia Space © ESA/Thales Alenia Space

China and India, meanwhile, have both recently demonstrated their lunar prowess. In June, China’s Chang’e-6 returned to Earth with 2kg of rock and soil samples from the far side of the Moon, the remote area permanently turned away from Earth. The China National Space Administration is aiming to land a crew near the South Pole by 2030.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 probe touched down near the Moon’s South Pole last year and transmitted scientific observations about the chemistry and physics of the lunar environment. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning further robotic missions, with the ambition of a crewed landing by 2040.

There is one notable absence from the new Moon race: Nasa’s old rival Russia, whose space exploration programme has faded into a pale shadow of its Soviet predecessor in the 1960s. After last year’s humiliating failure of the Luna-25 mission, the country’s first attempted lunar landing since 1976, the future of its Moon ambitions is uncertain. One route may come from Russian participation in China’s planned moon base, the International Lunar Research Station.

Many assume that the US and its Artemis allies will be the first to establish lunar sites — and claim the most desirable locations — but that is not a foregone conclusion, says Michelle Hanlon, director of the Centre for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi.

“We are dealing with a very finite space and there’s going to be conflict at every level,” adds Hanlon. “In the next five years we have to figure out how to mitigate it so that it doesn’t escalate.”

Four overlapping motivations are driving participants in the race to the Moon, says Daniel Neuenschwander, head of human and robotic exploration at the European Space Agency (Esa).

“They are scientific research, technological development, geopolitical considerations and inspiration,” he says. “Lunar exploration captures the imagination of any young person . . . There is a huge potential for science education, as was seen in the US with the Apollo programme.”

Scientists relish the prospect of doing research on and from the Moon, says Ian Crawford, professor of planetary science at Birkbeck, University of London.

He describes the Moon as a kind of “museum of solar system history”. “Because it has no atmosphere and has been geologically inactive for billions of years, the surface will preserve a record of everything that has hit or fallen on the Moon, including the solar wind, particles, meteorites and galactic cosmic rays.”

Digging deeper might expose primordial lunar material to reveal new details about the early history of the solar system.

“At the same time, the Moon could be a valuable platform for observational astronomy looking out into space,” Crawford adds. The far side, permanently shielded from terrestrial interference, is the ideal site for radio-astronomy.

Diagram showing some of the possibilities for natural resources on the moon illustrated with satellite imagery

Technological development on the Moon has two strands, says Esa’s Neuenschwander. “One is to be a test bed for technologies we’ll need to go to Mars and beyond, such as life support systems and habitat construction,” he explains. “The second point is that there will be spin-offs on Earth — for energy production and storage, sustainable living technologies, even 3D printing of habitats.”

Then there are geopolitical reasons for exploring and colonising the Moon, which the space industry is more reluctant to discuss. “National prestige is an element that we haven’t talked about enough,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, professor of space science at ETH Zurich who ran Nasa’s science missions until 2022. “People want to plant their flags to show technical superiority.”

In April, the US and Japan signed an agreement for the Japanese Space Agency (Jaxa) to develop and operate a pressurised rover for lunar exploration, which Nasa will deliver to the Moon. At the same time, the two allies announced “a shared goal for a Japanese national to be the first non-American astronaut to land on the Moon.”

Esa has been promised seats for European astronauts on an early mission in return for its contributions, including modules for Nasa’s Orion spacecraft that will carry humans to the Moon.

Neuenschwander sounds disappointed but pragmatic about the prospect of a Japanese astronaut landing before a European. “We understand that there is a geostrategic element here. The co-operation between Japan and the US goes far beyond space,” he says.

The defence dimension of lunar programmes is “really critical”, Zurbuchen says. “Many people have not appreciated this almost military viewpoint. It may be only a small part of what motivates Nasa but ignoring it does not tell the whole story.”

Disputes are likely to focus on the South Pole, believed to hold the Moon’s largest concentration of ice. Water will be essential for human settlements — not only for drinking, cooking, washing and growing plants but also to split chemically into oxygen and hydrogen for breathing and fuel, using solar electricity.

Although lunar probes have already detected water, there remains huge uncertainty about its quantity and quality, says Zurbuchen, with estimates ranging from hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions of tonnes. Nor is it clear whether water exists mainly in the form of tiny ice crystals mixed finely with the lunar soil, which would be hard to extract and purify, or whether thicker layers of ice might be accessible from the surface.

Some answers are expected from the next generation of rovers. Nasa’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (Viper), due to launch in November 2024, will spend 100 days looking for water near the South Pole, equipped with a one-metre drill. A joint Lunar Polar Exploration (Lupex) mission between Jaxa and ISRO, scheduled for launch next year, should provide more data.

Diagram showing some of the planned moon missions over the next few years

Until more is known about the distribution of water reserves, it will be hard to assess the risk of conflict between rival space powers over prime landing and colonisation sites. In 2022, Nasa published a list of 13 candidate sites for Artemis landings within six degrees of the South Pole, each measuring 15km by 15km. They were chosen according to scientific criteria including terrain slope and lighting conditions as well as proximity to permanently shadowed areas — and reports suggest that China is eyeing some of the same sites.

Nasa cannot reserve or make territorial claims over any of those sites, under the terms of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, described as “our Magna Carta” by the University of Mississippi’s Hanlon. But the Artemis Accords, drawn up by the US and signed by 43 countries, though not by China or Russia, allow for lunar operators to set up a “safety zone” around their activities “to avoid harmful interference”.

“Let’s say China beats the US to the Moon,” says Hanlon. “Then China might say: ‘You had a great idea of safety zones and we’re here on the South Pole where all the water is. We need a 40km safety zone.’”

Some disputes will be inevitable, Hanlon says. In the current geopolitical climate, there seems little prospect of a new global agreement to update the Outer Space Treaty in a way that reduces the risk of clashes between competing explorers and settlers.

Koji Yamanaka, director of Jaxa’s space exploration centre, is more optimistic. “I cannot predict two or three hundred years into the future but for the moment we don’t have to worry about lack of space,” he says. “Of course we will try to co-ordinate but there’s no need for conflict.”

Although attention now focuses on the South Pole, other regions of the moon might have different attractions. This week, for example, scientists at the University of Trento published evidence for a huge underground cave, accessible from the surface, close to the original Apollo 11 landing site. The cave, discovered by analysing satellite radar data, could house a lunar base for astronauts, they said; whether it contains any ice is not known.

If human settlements on the moon expand, as space optimists hope, their creation and servicing will fuel a multibillion-dollar lunar economy. Contractors and suppliers will initially be funded by governments through space agencies but a sustainable commercial sector could develop over time.

Yamanaka lists some of the opportunities that could open up on the Moon: generating, storing and transporting energy and fuel; communications and transport; providing water and oxygen; construction; growing and distributing food; waste management; health and fitness; entertainment, culture and sport.

But there are challenges that come with life on the Moon. One significant problem is the presence of regolith, the loose grey soil covering the lunar surface. Its sharp, abrasive and toxic dust particles are a hazard to the health of humans and machinery, as the Apollo astronauts found.

“Their suits broke down at much greater rates than Nasa was expecting,” says John Culton, head of the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Research at the University of Adelaide. “They were so damaged by three trips outside that they were no longer capable of securing the oxygen inside the suit.”

More research will be needed into hardening robotic machinery against the pervasive regolith dust, he says, as well as stopping it getting into astronauts’ helmets, gloves and spacesuits or into their living quarters.

Home comforts will also be essential for the morale and effectiveness of astronauts living and working on the Moon, initially for 30-day periods. “Their happiness is important,” says Nasa’s Free, “and as someone who loves coffee, a coffee machine is essential.”

A woman wears a spacesuit inside a hanger with a large model of the Moon in the background — Angela Garcia, an exploration geologist contractor, wears a unpressurised mock-up spacesuit used for moonwalk tests at Nasa Johnson Space Center © Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Opinions differ on when or even whether lunar tourism will take off on a significant scale. “The first stage will be some millionaires or billionaires wanting to go there,” says Yamanaka, adding that one day ordinary people “will be able to go to the Moon, but I don’t know when.”

Water — and the hydrogen and oxygen produced from it — will be the most important resource for the lunar economy, for use on the moon itself and on missions heading further into the solar system. Lunar rock could also yield metals and minerals for local manufacturing.

Whether the moon holds resources valuable enough to extract and bring back to Earth is less certain. Some see helium-3, an isotope that is extremely rare on Earth but more abundant on the lunar surface, as an attractive candidate for use in fusion reactors, says Francis Rocard, head of solar system exploration at the French space agency CNES, “but it will be in the second part of this century, certainly not before — if nuclear fusion works.”

The consultancy Arthur D Little, working with the European business group Euro2Moon, has developed five plausible scenarios for lunar development, from the Prosperous Frontier with thriving tourism, long-term habitation and abundant resources to a Desolate Horizon with no economic activity.

But it will take time to know which scenario will be realised. “In seven to ten years’ time we will probably be able to pick one or two with quite a good degree of certainty, whether it’s the Desolate Horizon, Prosperous Frontier or somewhere in between,” says managing partner Matteo Ainardi.

Parmitano, the Esa astronaut, is uncertain too about humanity’s longer-term future on the Moon. “It’s something we’re trying to figure out as an agency and on a personal level,” he says. “For the next decade or two we want to understand the most sustainable way to support settlement on the lunar surface. We have to try because space exploration aims to answer some of our ultimate questions as humans.”

Graphic illustrations by Ian Bott, Bob Haslett and Cleve Jones