From Apollo Hoaxes to Artemis 2: Humanity Returns to the Moon

NASA’s upcoming Artemis 2 launch will mark the first time humans will orbit the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

During the mission, four NASA astronauts will test the Orion spacecraft’s systems and examine its capabilities to keep humans alive in the deep space environment. Despite the technological and scientific challenges of manned space flight, there are several legal issues regarding human activities in space.

The Jute Journal interviewed Dr Alexander Simmonds, an expert in Space Law at the University of Dundee and author of The Space Legislation of the United Kingdom, published by Brill in 2025.

It is an exciting time for those with an interest in space, as Dr Simmonds said:

“Space is always exciting, now particularly we’ve got Artemis 2 that will be followed by Artemis 3 (the mission will test out systems and operational capabilities to prepare for an Artemis 4 moon landing in 2028).”

“In other respects, it’s exciting, because we have got a lot of new space activity at the moment. In Scotland, we have got a launch pad in the Shetland Islands – the SaxaVord Spaceport. It sounded fantastical 15 years ago, but it is now a reality.”

With many claiming that the first moon landing was ‘staged’ to bankrupt the Soviet Union as part of a Cold War strategy, we asked Dr Simmonds for his opinion on it, and he said:

“Geopolitics can be an intensely nasty thing and people should be under no illusion as to the power of disinformation, conspiracy theories relating to the moon landings are simply not borne out by the evidence.”

“For example, scientists on Earth have inspected the vast quantities of moon rock brought back from the Apollo missions and agree that they came from the Moon. Furthermore, owing to advances in technology, a number of high-resolution images now clearly show the Apollo landing sites in pictures taken since the missions.”

“It is also hard to fathom why, if it were a hoax, they would say that they’d been there 6 times. Wouldn’t the more effective strategy be to fake one landing just to be able to say that they’d beaten the Russians and then leave it at that?”

In a world with escalating financial, ethical and environmental challenges, should we be spending all this money on space exploration, when we can redirect the funding to solve real problems on earth instead? Dr Simmonds said:

“It is a question that has been asked since space programs began. I believe Neil Armstrong was asked the same, and he said, we don’t have to choose one or the other. We can do both. It is within our ability to do both.”

“Ultimately, the survival of the human species may depend on space travel since the Sun, by many scientific estimates, will eventually die and possibly even expand, which would make the Earth uninhabitable.”

“However, the amount of environmental damage caused by space activities cannot be understated, and this is well documented. My own take is that people are going to use space. That’s a fact of life. Therefore, what we must do is ensure that the sustainability provisions are robust and that the environmental impact is as minimal as possible.”

Despite the negatives, an account that is often overlooked is that:

“Space usage helps fight against climate change. Because we have got satellites up there that monitor the ice caps melting, patterns of crop failure on earth and other relevant matters.”

“In terms of the environmental aspect, Section 11 of the Space Industry Act (2018) requires that an operator of space activities submit an Assessment of Environmental Effects (AEE). So far, the assessments that have been produced are very comprehensive and robust, hundreds of pages. It shows that operators are taking the environmental aspects of their activities seriously.”

The law plays a great role in standardising space usage, which can lead to legal complications. When asked about the relevant legislation regarding the launch of Artemis 2, Dr Simmonds responded:

“The Moon Treaty (1979) applies because it is about the uses of the moon, as one of the aims of the Artemis Program is to use the moon as a staging post for future space explorations, possibly onto Mars.”

“The most relevant legislation is the Outer Space Treaty (1967), being the first instrument regulating and ensuring peaceful use of outer space. It’s important to think about the historical context, in the 1960s when there were a lot of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union (the Cold War). The great powers developed the hydrogen bomb, which was immensely more powerful than the bombs that were dropped on Japan in the 1940s [Hiroshima and Nagasaki].”

“In some ways, it was an arms control treaty preventing people from stationing nuclear weapons in outer space. It said that no state can claim sovereignty or claim any part of outer space to be theirs.”

Acknowledgements – special thanks to Dr Alexander Simmonds for his Expert Commentary and @wp2636073 for co-conducting the Interview.