Archaeology can offer lessons for future space colonies—but we must protect existing lunar heritage first

Without the astronauts realising, the rocket exhaust that slowed their lander’s descent threw up moon dust with such intensity that it “sandblasted” the 1967 Surveyor 3 probe, 155m away, leaving parts of it pitted with craters. It is a striking example of how far and fast lunar dust is flung by landing spacecraft—and a warning that, even on the moon, cultural heritage is not safe.

Faced with such challenges, in 2011 Nasa published its recommendations for protecting US government lunar artefacts. Any descending spacecraft is advised to respect a 2km exclusion zone from their heritage landers—for example, keeping the site of Neil Armstrong’s “one giant leap for mankind” protected from dangerous high-velocity moon dust. 

But as experts have explained, this distance was always just a placeholder, meant to be revised after further research. The true safe distance might be much further.

And this is not the only problem. The many issues surrounding the preservation of lunar space heritage were recently summarised in a paper by Teasel Muir-Harmony of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and Todd Mosher of the University of Colorado. Significantly, as they note in the journal Acta Astronautica, “There is currently no international heritage law that applies to historic or future sites on the moon.”