Future Machines on the Moon: Robotic Autonomy, Human Supervision and the Emerging Security Dimension of Lunar Operations
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Lunar exploration has shifted from single flights to a planned buildup of permanent infrastructure. NASA flew four astronauts around the Moon on Artemis II in April 2026, and within eight weeks announced the first three robotic Moon Base missions along with close to a billion dollars in contracts for surface rovers, cargo landers and hopping drones. A parallel programme led by China and Russia, the International Lunar Research Station, is working towards a basic configuration by 2035 with a nuclear power unit delivered between 2033 and 2035. This paper examines the machines that will carry out most of the work in both programmes. It sets out the supervised autonomy model that governs how humans and robots divide decisions under communication delay, identifies the specific artificial intelligence techniques that lunar robots depend on, and proposes an interaction protocol for surface operations. The paper then turns to security. Nearly every capability needed for lunar construction, survey and resource extraction has an obvious military application, and the argument advanced here is that any confrontation on the Moon would be short, machine-led and fought over access to a small number of usable sites rather than over territory in the terrestrial sense. Gaps in the Outer Space Treaty and in the Artemis Accords are assessed against that prospect.
Institution: Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7223027396