Donald Trump's transition team asked NASA for details on its for-profit partnerships, and sought information about the potential to mine resources on the moon, according to a trove of internal documents obtained by Motherboard.
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The Trump transition team seems to have asked NASA about mining on the moon
A trove of documents from the Trump transition team's meetings with NASA reveal an interest in resource extraction on the moon.
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According to the documents, the questions from Trump's Agency Review Team (ART) largely focused on the interests of commercial space companies and NASA's potential help them turn profits.
Here's the topline request on one document:
The prospector mission would focus on investigating resources on the moon that would be necessary for human habitation, including oxygen, hydrogen, and other valuable compounds.
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There are a number of other resources on the moon, including rare earth metals, that could be of interest to commercial companies. But, as Motherboard points out, strip-mining the moon for profit could put the US at risk of violating the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which forbids unilateral private use of space resources.
Whether Trump will actually push for mining on the moon remains to be seen, of course. But the arm of NASA that deals with human spaceflight is one of the few scientific sectors of the non-military government that isn't facing major cuts in the White House's budget proposal.
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