Before We Mine the Moon, We Need to Know What Is There

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZQBYG5Gvdk

Notre Dame's Clive Neal on why lunar mining talk is running ahead of the data and why the answer has to be international.

In April 2026, the four astronauts of Artemis II completed the first crewed lunar flyby of NASA’s Artemis programme, bringing the possibility of a sustained human return to the Moon significantly closer. But before we build bases, extract water or talk too confidently about a flourishing lunar economy, Professor Clive Neal believes we must answer a much more fundamental question: what is actually there?

I sat down with Clive at Space Resources Week in Luxembourg, for the first in a new series of conversations exploring the people, technologies and decisions that will shape the global space economy. Clive is Professor of Planetary Geology at the University of Notre Dame and has spent almost 40 years studying the Moon. Since we recorded our conversation, he has been awarded NASA’s 2026 Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal, recognising an extraordinary career in lunar science and exploration.

Resource vs. Reserve

A resource, Neal explains, is a potential commodity we know is physically present. A reserve is something else entirely: a commodity whose quantity, variability, purity and extractability are known well enough to access, extract, refine and sell at a profit.

"Reserves are a very small portion of the resource because they have sufficient concentration to be profitable to extract."

By that definition, the Moon currently has resources such as water ice at the south pole, oxygen locked in regolith,  but no confirmed reserves. The only candidate close to reserve status, in his view, is oxygen from regolith, since it's present in roughly the same proportion everywhere on the Moon. Even that faces unresolved legal and economic questions.

The gap between the two words is where an entire generation of lunar business cases currently sits.

The Rover That Kept Coming Back From the Dead

The tool built to close that gap was VIPER - NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover. It was fully built. It had completed most of its environmental testing. It cost $455 million, then NASA cancelled it for the second time, having also killed an earlier version of the mission back in 2018, in order to  to save $84 million, giving the community a two-week ultimatum to find a commercial partner willing to fly it for free.

The backlash worked. Blue Origin is now going to carry VIPER to the Moon in 2028. 

"It's come out of the ashes twice now"

Why does one rover matter this much? Because prospecting, the unglamorous work of mapping what's actually on and under the surface, is the step that turns a resource into a reserve. 

"Orbital data are great, but they're very coarse-grained" 

Ground-truthing hot spots with rovers reduces the uncertainty in those orbital models, which in turn tells you where to send the next rover. Skip that step, and every subsequent decision, including where to put a permanent Moon base, is a guess dressed up as a plan.

Why This Can't Be a Solo Mission

Neal's proposed fix is the International Lunar Resource Prospecting Campaign (ILRPC), co-authored with a roster that includes ESA's James Carpenter and NASA's Gerald Sanders, among others. His argument is simple: no single country can mount a prospecting campaign of the scale required. It has to be international, both practically to spread cost and effort across more missions and instruments, and legally, since the 1967 Outer Space Treaty (110 signatories) holds that the Moon is "for all humanity."

Asked who he'd want at the table, Neal is as direct as ever: "NASA. I would like China as well." 

His reasoning leans on history rather than idealism. Apollo, driven by Cold War competition, produced six landings in three years, and then nothing. The International Space Station, built on cooperation, has sustained continuous human presence for 25-plus years.

"We look at international competition, and that does not give you an enduring programme. If we don't learn from history, we'll be destined to repeat it."

Nobody Owns the Moon, but Someone will Own the Base

On the increasingly live question of lunar territory, Neal is unambiguous: no nation or company can own land on the Moon. What a country or agency can own is the infrastructure it builds there. 

"The country or the state that puts up the Moon base will own the Moon base. They will not own the land upon which that Moon base is situated." 

From there, cooperation and shared access are choices, not legal requirements.

He also argues against a single, monolithic base. Given the risk of a meteoroid strike or other single-point failure, he favours a distributed model: several bases, sited to fit a shared selection rubric, cost-reduced through duplication. He expects the community to be able to pin down a viable landing site by the end of this decade.

The Case for Doing Any of This At All - Spin Back potential to Earth

Pressed on why any of this is worth the enormous cost, Neal goes back to spin-back benefits: Apollo-era miniaturisation gave the world the smartphone. Research into preventing astronaut bone loss on the way to Mars is directly relevant to osteoporosis. Learning to beneficiate lunar ore without water could eliminate the tailings ponds and dam failures that plague terrestrial mining. 

Europe has a particularly important part to play. Clive argues that Europe is currently leading work on in-situ resource utilisation, supported by ESA, ESRIC and the wider research and innovation community. Luxembourg has become one of the places where scientists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, engineers, investors and policymakers can meet as one community and confront the difficult questions together.

Interdisciplinary Learning

Perhaps the most striking element of this conversation is Clive’s own story. The son of a factory worker and the first generation of his family to attend university, he travelled to America for what he believed would be a two-year research position. Nearly four decades later, one of his former students, Kelsey Young, served as the Artemis II Science Flight Operations Lead. His response is characteristically modest: we never fully know whom we will influence, so we should show our enthusiasm and help as many people as possible.

This is precisely why I wanted to begin The Space Economy with Clive Neal. The lunar economy will require spacecraft, machines and investment, but it will also require honesty about what we know, collaboration across borders and a clear understanding of whom this new economy is intended to serve.

As part of his vast remit of work, Clive influences the next generation through his work as a Professor at Notre Dame University. Here, he has developed an interdisciplinary undergraduate course across three different departments, including a course on Space Ethics. 

Clive Neal was recently awarded NASA's 2026 Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal. This is the first in a new interview series on the people building the Space Economy, filmed at Space Resources Week Luxembourg 2026.