“I know I may not make it through this lunar night.” The China Academy of Space Technology laid the pathos on thick when it gave its lunar robot Jade Rabbit a farewell speech at the end of last month. The rover had become mired in moon dust and was unable to enter hibernation. Facing 14 days without sunlight, the solar-powered robot, launched on December 2, was unlikely to survive. “Good night, Planet Earth,” it said. “Good night, humanity.”

It looked like the end of a venture that could have accelerated the process of finding out who—if anyone—owns the moon. The ultimate goal for Jade Rabbit was to bore a hole in the moon and see what moon rock is made of. That’s because the Chinese think the moon’s minerals might be worth extracting. “They are looking at feasibility for mining the moon, and they are likely to do it if there’s a strong business case,” says Richard Holdaway, director of the space division at the UK’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, which collaborates closely with China’s space program.

There would be nothing illegal about such an operation because international laws covering the moon are “way, way behind”, as Holdaway puts it. In theory, anyone who could manage it (and afford it) could go to the moon tomorrow, dig out a huge chunk of lunar rock, bring it back to earth and sell it off to the highest bidder. The Chinese could take the moon apart and sell it bit by bit without breaking international law. The question we have to ask ourselves is simple: do we see a need to prevent that happening?

The moon’s bounty is not fanciful science fiction. “There is stuff on the moon to mine—no doubt about it,” Holdaway says. We know that minerals that are hard to find on earth, such as the “rare earth” elements and the metals titanium and uranium, are abundant up there. But the main prize is the lighter isotope of helium, known as helium-3. This gas is the critical fuel for nuclear fusion reactors, which promise an energy yield many times higher than the present generation of fission-powered reactors. Helium-3 costs roughly $10m a kilo. Though we don’t yet have commercial fusion reactors, these might not be far off. When they arrive, the demand for helium-3 will outstrip supply, and the easiest place to get more will be from moon rock. It couldn’t be easier: heat the rock and the gas comes out.

It’s not just the Chinese who have ambitions in this direction. Some private companies also have their eye on lunar rock as a source of riches. Most are based in the U.S., and they are actively working on lunar landers that will eventually be able to perform mineral extraction.