This personal reflection is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.
Turning Point: In February, Intuitive Machines became the first private, nongovernmental entity to achieve a soft landing on the moon.
I believe we really can achieve peace on Earth — and even beyond our planet. Perhaps that’s naïve, but I was lucky enough to be born into a universe of rich diversity that continues to inspire me.
My mother is from a town near Shanghai and my father is of Polish descent. They were married, incidentally, on the same day the Soviet Union’s Luna-2 spacecraft crash-landed on the moon, marking humanity’s first impact on another celestial body. My father joined the United States Foreign Service soon after, and I spent my childhood moving across Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia, attending international schools and forging bonds with classmates from all parts of the planet. Though culturally tied to different nations, we were embraced by the commonality of our life on this beautiful Earth. It is a global bond that too many people fail to recognize.
Today, as a space lawyer, I navigate the legal complexities of humanity’s journey beyond Earth, working through challenges with orbital debris, private property ownership in space, space resource utilization and more. During this pivotal moment in the history of space exploration, as humanity transitions from Earth to a multiplanetary existence, I am dedicated to ensuring that space remains a domain of peace and accessibility. It starts with our moon.
Though several missions have targeted our natural satellite in this century, the pace of lunar exploration has significantly accelerated in the past decade, especially after India’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft confirmed the presence of water on the lunar surface in 2008. In the years that followed, China, Russia, India and Japan have all landed or attempted to land on the moon. And in 2024, a new milestone was achieved: Intuitive Machines became the first private, nongovernmental entity to achieve a soft landing on the moon, the closest approach to the lunar south pole by humans to date. Later in the year, we witnessed China’s sixth robotic mission and the first-ever return of samples from the far side of the moon. Multiple future missions, including crewed ones by both China and the United States, are planned within this decade.
Is it feeling a bit like a competition? It should.
When my parents moved to Beijing in 1980, I witnessed the rapid modernization of China. The sense of playing catch-up to the West was palpable, and the pace of progress over the next decade was astonishing.
While I was stunned and even ashamed by the poor living conditions in Beijing at the time, I was even more amazed by the human similarities that transcended diplomatic barriers. Walking in a crowded Tiananmen Square on a hot summer night, my brother and I were recognized as “mei guo ren,” or Americans, primarily because we were not wearing the anonymizing Mao suits adopted by the Chinese during the cultural revolution. And people flocked to us — open, curious and eager to practice their English.
I also witnessed the backlash to this rapid modernization. In the spring of 1989, Tiananmen Square — the place my brother and I had once felt welcomed — echoed with the chants of brave and passionate students channeling a powerful vision for a future of hope and freedom. Just days later, their voices were violently, brutally extinguished. They were my age.
Sadly, violence continues to plague our globe, often in the name of freedom. Is it any wonder that we look to the stars, as humans have for millenniums, for solace? As much as I am a foreign service brat, I am also a child of “Star Trek.” My gender and race notwithstanding, I grew up picturing myself in every role on the starship Enterprise, representing a united human race. This is the future I wanted to live in. This is the future I am working to build.
The fast-paced technological advancements I saw transform China in the 1980s have only accelerated in recent years. Today, the Chinese Communist Party wants to be the world leader in space activities, using a planned lunar base as a starting point to explore and extract valuable resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies. Being able to access water from the moon’s south pole is key to that vision; whoever gets there first will have bragging rights and a distinct legal advantage. Though international law tells us a nation cannot claim territory in space, it also states that we must have “due regard” for each other’s activities. Yet no legal definition of “due regard” exists, so the first country to set up lunar mining operations could exploit the concept, demanding no other space actor come within meters of an existing landing or mining site.
The impact of lunar development in the decades to come has the potential to be revolutionary. Achieving the capability to harness resources from other celestial bodies will change humankind utterly and irreversibly. The first technological revolution, toolmaking, defined our humanity. The agricultural revolution gave rise to villages, cities and our civilizations. The industrial and digital revolutions have shaped the modern global economy. But the space revolution is leading humanity into an entirely new and uncharted realm.
It is a realm that offers a unique opportunity to unite us. As we look to the moon and beyond, we have the chance to foster international cooperation and shared goals, transcending our earthly divisions. In the universe beyond our planet, how will we manage access to limited resources, promote sustainability and ensure national security and defense? The challenges we face in space are a microcosm of those we face on Earth, and the solutions we develop for one can help solve the problems in the other.
I believe that we can build a future where space is accessible to all, where the moon is a place of peaceful cooperation and the stars inspire us to be our best selves. But that requires laying the foundation now with international cooperation and commitment — bridging the gap across countries and cultures. And someday, our descendants — whether from China, Poland, the United States or anywhere else — will extol the virtues of Earth from their homes on Mars and beyond, united in the common cause of exploring and harnessing the vast resources of the cosmos for the betterment of all humanity.
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