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The renewed interest in the moon can arguably be traced back to the 2009 discovery of water ice on the lunar surface. Much of the narrative in the intervening decade and a half has been set to a background score of a military drumroll slowly gathering pace. The competing visions vis-à-vis lunar exploration and exploitation have pitted two international coalitions against each other — the United States and its partners on one hand, and China, Russia and their partners on the other — and that dichotomy has dictated much of the conversation around the second lunar race.
Certainly, phrases like ‘space dominance’ and ‘space is a warfighting domain’ help rake in big-budget military R&D funds. The increasingly visible U.S.-China competition in all spheres is expected to spill over to their lunar conquests, potentially paving the way for military confrontations in space. However, at this crucial juncture, it is necessary that responsible space powers act with caution, advocating cooperation over contestation and sustainability over destruction. This is particularly so in the case of the moon, which holds deep cultural significance, as well as the potential to catalyze mankind’s exploration farther into the cosmos. Other international efforts, such as the growing partnership between India and Japan, showcase how lunar cooperation may be fostered even amidst a climate of contestation.
Learning from experience
The success of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) Chandrayaan-1 mission is in itself an example of how much there is to gain from cooperation. The two payloads provided by NASA confirmed and validated the data from ISRO’s mass spectrometer, leading to the detection of water molecules on the moon.
In a way, the mission highlighted how much was lost in the decades before. A combination of Cold War politics and other security interests long barred India’s chances at civilian space cooperation with the West. India vividly remembers being a pariah in the high halls of international scientific cooperation. Given its emergence as a significant space power with a growing lunar presence, India is uniquely placed to lead the narrative away from one of contestation and toward a more collaborative approach.
The U.S. may be the pre-eminent space power and certainly has the most institutional knowledge with regards to manned lunar missions. However, in this particular instance, it may be another American ally which turns out to be a better fit — a natural partner — in helping set the rules of the road for lunar cooperation: Japan.
India & Japan pave the way
India and Japan are together striving to build a narrative on lunar cooperation grounded in the spirit of scientific collaboration and sustainability. The joint Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) project that ISRO and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are embarking upon is set to pioneer new modalities of lunar diplomacy.
The LUPEX mission, scheduled for launch in 2027 or 2028, aims to probe permanently shadowed regions on the lunar surface for water and water ice. The mission will be launched aboard JAXA’s H-3 rocket, carrying a lander provided by India and a rover by Japan.
In formulating means to execute the mission, JAXA and ISRO have engaged in a process of exchanging best practices from India’s Chandrayaan lunar missions as well as Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) mission. Through such endeavors and open data practices, India and Japan have been trying to pioneer a narrative which presents lunar exploration for the benefit of all humanity.
The spirit of collaboration driving this diplomacy is evident from the efforts made to host scientific instruments from other like-minded partners as well. Among LUPEX’s seven scientific payloads will be NASA’s neutron spectrometer — which will probe for hydrogen below the lunar regolith — and ESA’s Exospheric Mass Spectrometer — which will assess gas pressure and chemical signature at the surface.
With uncertainty surrounding NASA’s Artemis program, LUPEX can provide key learnings for the practice of lunar diplomacy and set a novel discourse for lunar exploration. It will also allow India and Japan to emerge as “strategic knowledge providers” within the broader dynamics driving deep space exploration.
Unique partners with high synergy
Amid geopolitical tensions threatening to erode the status of outer space as “common heritage of mankind,” the need for diplomatic processes to be both proactive and grounded in science cannot be overstated. Leveraging their common orientations toward space, India and Japan are ideally suited to build on the foundation of the Artemis Accords and evolve novel cooperative templates to set lunar diplomacy on a peaceful course.
With the U.S. involved in tariff wars with all and sundry, the expected leadership from the world’s preeminent space power — just as the second space age is starting to kick in — has been found wanting. This is a situation tailor-made for India and Japan to step up.
Among the leading space powers, India and Japan share unique traits. For one, their orientation toward space is grounded in an inalienable notion that space shall be utilized first and foremost for benefitting civilians. They also have a proven commitment to making space diplomacy work such as seen with India delivering the SAARC satellite to providing satellite communication services to its neighbors or Japan’s Kibo ISS module and its assistance to nations to launch their first satellites.
The U.S. has witnessed months of political turmoil regarding continued funding for space missions, including the Artemis program. It remains to be seen whether long-term, deep cuts to space science or exploration missions are carried out. Still, it seems apparent that the same levels of funding may no longer be there, at least outside of the military space context.
Normally, this should lead to the Artemis Accords fizzling out. However, this need not be the case. Since the escalation of tariff-gate, India has expressed through its renewed vigor at BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation that it has numerous partners and it is willing to work with all. Still, in the space domain, the Artemis Accords might remain the preferred framework for India to work with.
India already has strong partnerships in the space sector with a number of Artemis signatories including Australia, France, Germany, Israel, the UAE and U.K., as does Japan, which has the added experience of working in close collaboration with European states and Canada on the ISS program. With India and Japan collaborating on their lunar programs, the potential for other like-minded Artemis signatories to join this partnership will only increase the more volatile U.S. space policy gets.
Given the ever-increasing U.S. narrative on space dominance juxtaposed with India and Japan’s approach of “fostering a culture of cooperation,” this might indeed emerge as the real partnership for the global good.
Vineeth Krishnan is the director (Projects) and Anupama Vijayakumar is the director (Research) of Trivium Think Tank, an independent research institution dedicated to exploring the strategic imperatives of a Rising India through the lens of geopolitics, foreign policy and technopolitical transformation based in Thiruvananthapuram, India. Trivium’s research spans the full spectrum of high-tech domains with a particular focus on governance of AI, space and cyber domains to provide a holistic understanding of the role of science and technology in international relations.
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