Dr Katherine Bennell-Pegg

There's a lot of consideration around resources on the moon for the long term, being able to use the water once you create a base.

How do you properly ensure safe operations on that base?

We can't land particularly precisely yet on the moon and things like that.

And that's dealt with through a series of international agreements called the Artemis Accords.

which sets out behaviors that we want to see on the moon between all the nations that sign up to it.

No, they're not one of the Artemis nations.

There are other big international treaties that underpin how we operate in space.

There's five major ones, things like the Moon Treaty, the Outer Space Treaty, and so on.

They say things like, you know, space is for all mankind, moon is for all mankind, you can't have commercial exploitation, etc.

So there's a lot of debate that goes on in places like the UN, where Australia is represented through the Australian Space Agency, to make sure that when we go out there, we do it in a way that is responsible and that Australia's voice is heard in those discussions.

So the closest analogue I would consider is Antarctica.

You know, it's a place with a surface.

There is the ocean, like the high seas.

That's the basis for most space law.

But Antarctica is the closest analog for the moon because it's actually a territory.

And the way that we work together with international nations, international partners there, helps us to think how we might like to see things happen on the moon.

I mean, I'm someone that's comforted when I know more facts.

Everybody's a bit different.

I know that in the astronaut selection, they certainly wanted to make sure that we knew what we were in for from a risk perspective and the challenges, that it's not all, you know, that it's not easy, that it's not about going to space to take a selfie, going up there to work and take risks for good reason, not for the sake of taking risks, but there are risks.

The riskiest part of a mission is launch and reentry, followed by a spacewalk.