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World Monuments Fund: Space Tourism Threatens Moon Historic Sites

World Monuments Fund: Space Tourism Threatens Moon Historic Sites
World Monuments Fund: Space Tourism Threatens Moon Historic Sites
Written by Harry Johnson

For the first time, Moon was added to the WMF list of endangered historic sites, highlighting the threats posed by commercial space travel to the landing sites of the initial lunar missions.

Every two years, the World Monuments Fund (WMF), a private, international, non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cultural heritage sites around the world through fieldwork, advocacy, grantmaking, education, and training, releases a list of 25 sites endangered by climate change, tourism, conflict, and natural disasters. The organization’s advocacy has resulted in enhanced flood defenses in Venice, the restoration of the Mahadev Temple in Nepal, and the safeguarding of various temples within Cambodia’s Angkor Wat complex.

The most recent edition of the list encompasses sites across 29 countries, including the heavily damaged urban area of Gaza and the Swahili Coast, which extends across four East African nations.

Notably, it also marks the inclusion of the first-ever extraterrestrial heritage site.

The WMF has, for the first time, included the Moon on its list of endangered historic sites, highlighting the threats posed by commercial space travel to the landing sites of the initial lunar missions.

“As a new era of space exploration dawns, the physical remnants of early Moon landings are under threat, jeopardizing these enduring symbols of collective human achievement. On July 20, 1969, when the Apollo 11 mission landed in the Sea of Tranquility, 650 million people on Earth watched humans walk on the Moon’s surface for the first time,” the World Monuments Fund stated on its website.

“Tranquility Base is one of over 90 historic landing and impact sites that mark humankind’s presence on the Moon’s surface and testify to some of our most extraordinary feats of courage and ingenuity,” the organization added.

”Exploitative visitation, souveniring, and looting by future missions and private lunar exploration could eventually compromise this truly unique cultural heritage, removing artifacts and forever erasing iconic prints and tracks from the Moon’s surface,” the statement warned.

The Apollo 11 astronauts abandoned 106 artifacts at the Tranquility Base landing site, which comprise the lunar module, various scientific instruments, and the famous boot print of Neil Armstrong.

Although Moon landing locations have remained in a relatively stable state due to the lack of wind and flowing water on the Moon’s surface, the organization cautioned that “a recent resurgence of interest in human activity on the Moon, coupled with a growing commercial space industry,” poses a threat to their preservation.

Today, no specific international accord exist dedicated to the protection of lunar exploration heritage. Nevertheless, two years ago, several archaeologists and scientists established the International Scientific Committee on Aerospace Heritage with the aim of advocating for the preservation of what they refer to as “humanity’s tangible and intangible aerospace heritage.” This organization has urged global leaders to create a formal treaty that would safeguard lunar locations from commercial exploitation.

SpaceX successfully launched two lunar probes last week, as preparations continue for the return of humans to the Moon with NASA’s Artemis III mission, which has faced multiple delays and is now scheduled for 2027, while the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is set to undertake three uncrewed missions from 2025 to 2028, and the China Manned Space Agency has plans for crewed lunar landings by 2030.

Currently, there are no commercial tourist Moon landings on the agenda, but SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin have all expressed their intentions to engage in space tourism, offering lunar travel to paying customers.

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