Neuraspace CEO floats lunar scrapyards as a cleaner way to handle hardware left behind
INTERVIEW On August 5, a spent Falcon 9 upper stage is expected to crash into the Moon. Humanity has not done a great job of looking after the space around Earth. What could be done differently around the Moon?How about lunar scrapyards?Chiara Manfletti, CEO of satellite collision avoidance business Neuraspace, reckons one option could be to pick specific locations on the Moon's surface as dumping grounds where material can be deposited, collected, and recycled.
"I think it's actually more sustainable than, for example, re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Because, in the end, they are resources that we could reuse."
Manfletti is looking into the future, but in a few decades – if the plans of space agencies and their commercial partners are realized – the space around the Moon could rapidly become crowded. Neuraspace is all too aware of the situation around Earth, making the CEO well-placed to comment on what has and hasn't worked well in Earth's orbit and how things could be done differently around the Moon.Around Earth, some orbits are protected and some are not, "which I think was never a good approach," says Manfletti, "because with the amount of objects going up, each and every orbit should be seen as protected." There are graveyard orbits, where spacecraft can be placed as an alternative to a controlled re-entry, although Manfletti says the approach is not particularly sustainable. "Maybe one day we can reuse the material there."The problem is how to persuade governments and industry to work together. "We don't have a single body," says Manfletti, "that can speak, and then everybody says: 'Oh, fantastic! They have spoken, and we shall do it!' It's not how it works."When we spoke to Manfletti in 2024 about the state of the space around the Earth, she wasn't keen on regulations, partly because getting every nation and company to follow the same rules would be nearly impossible. A similar situation applies to the Moon, though there is an opportunity to do things differently.
