The United States and China are pursuing lunar bases at the Moon’s South Pole. China’s International Lunar Research Station is being developed with partners including Russia, while NASA’s programme targets the same region. Both programmes seek permanently shadowed regions (PSRs), where scientists expect water ice; NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) is scheduled to investigate PSRs in 2027, while China plans a thruster-powered hopper to enter them, including the 12-kilometre-wide Shackleton Crater.
Polar water is a civilisation-critical resource: it can supply drinking water, oxygen, radiation shielding, and hydrogen-oxygen propellant, reducing dependence on Earth. The geographic concentration of accessible ice creates a strategic bottleneck. Although the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits national territorial claims, it protects deployed hardware from harmful interference; an early operator could therefore gain practical control over an ice-rich crater without formal ownership.
The Ark team should treat South Pole access as a primary dependency: maintain continuous tracking of VIPER, China’s hopper, the International Lunar Research Station, and NASA landing infrastructure; map alternative ice deposits and routes outside contested zones; model consumption and extraction rates; and design diplomatic, legal, and engineering safeguards for shared access. Ark site selection should require redundancy across multiple water sources rather than reliance on Shackleton Crater or any single national logistics network.