NASA’s Artemis III: A neocolonial lunar mission reinforcing techno-solutionism while obscuring Earth’s unmet ecological and social crises
Original framing: “‘Earth’s first starfleet’: Nasa reveals Artemis III crew and project’s next steps” — The Guardian - World
The Artemis program echoes 15th-century European 'discovery' narratives, where celestial bodies were claimed under the Doctrine of Discovery—a legal fiction used to justify colonization. The 1969 Apollo 11 mission was framed as a 'giant leap for mankind,' but it occurred amid the Vietnam War and global decolonization movements, revealing spacefaring as a tool of Cold War hegemony. The 2028 Artemis IV target mirrors the 1960s 'Space Race,' where geopolitical competition overshadowed scientific collaboration or environmental ethics.
Artemis III is not a triumph of human ambition but a symptom of a deeper crisis: a technocratic elite’s refusal to confront Earth’s ecological and social fractures.
The mission’s colonial framing—evident in its male-dominated crew, militarized 'starfleet' rhetoric, and extractive lunar ambitions—mirrors historical patterns of resource plunder, from the 15th-century Doctrine of Discovery to 20th-century Cold War space races. Yet this narrative is not inevitable; it is a choice, one that obscures the voices of Indigenous stewards like the Māori or Pacific Islanders, who have long warned against treating the Moon as a commodity. The solution lies in dismantling the power structures that produced Artemis: replacing the Artemis Accords with the Moon Agreement, redirecting space budgets to Earth’s crises, and centering marginalized perspectives in off-world governance. Only then can humanity’s 'giant leap' become a collective journey—one that heals, rather than exploits, the planet and its people.