Tranquility base, the spot where humans first set foot on the moon, should be granted special heritage status and protected against damage from future visitors and missions, according to the head of the European Space Agency.

The site where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down 50 years ago on Saturday warrants protection as it marks the historic moment when humans reached beyond Earth to another celestial body, said Prof Jan Wörner, the director general of ESA.

“The Apollo 11 landing site is world heritage for humanity,” he told the Guardian. “This was humans, as they had in the past, going beyond what they had done before. When humans came out of their caves, they were going beyond. And this was another dimension of going beyond, to another body in our universe.”

The fate of Armstrong’s footprints on the moon, not to mention three lunar rovers and more than 100 other items including a family photograph, a golden olive branch, a “defecation collection device” and, of course, some golf balls, is unknown. And now, as space agencies and private companies gear up for unprecedented operations on the moon, they seem more vulnerable than ever.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Neil Armstrong’s right foot leaves a footprint in the lunar soil. Photograph: AFP/Getty

It is not only Tranquility base that Wörner wants protected. The Soviets landed the first rover on the moon in November 1970. The defunct Lunokhod 1, last heard from in September 1971, is among more than a dozen pieces of Soviet hardware stranded on the moon. “Apollo 11 and Lunokhod would be the two sites I would save. These were both a climax, a culmination of all that was done until then,” Wörner said.

But protecting lunar heritage may not be straightforward. On Earth, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) decides what deserves world heritage status from nominations sent by countries that claim ownership of the sites. Different rules apply in space. The UN’s outer space treaty, a keystone of space law, states that all countries are free to explore and use space, but warns it “is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty”. In other words, space is for all and owned by none.

Wörner is not put off and sees no need for troublesome regulations. “My hope is that humanity is smart enough not to go back to this type of earthly protection. Just protect it. That’s enough. Just protect it and have everybody agree,” he said. A no-go zone of 50 metres around Tranquility base should do the job, he added.

Martin Rees, the Cambridge cosmologist and astronomer royal, said there was a case for designating the sites so future generations and explorers were aware of their importance. “If there are any artefacts there, they shouldn’t be purloined,” he said. “Probably orbiting spacecraft will provide routine CCTV-style coverage which would prevent this from being done clandestinely.”

Beyond the dust-covered hardware that stands motionless on the moon, Lord Rees suspects future activity could drive calls for broader lunar protection. The Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt has advocated strip mining the moon for helium-3, a potential source of energy.

The proposal, which Rees suggests has raised eyebrows in the community, could potentially provoke a backlash. “There might be pressure to preserve the more attractive moonscapes against such despoilation, and to try to enforce regulations as in the Antarctic,” he said.

Fifty years on from Apollo 11, the moon is still a place to make statements. In January, the Chinese space agency became the first to land a probe on the far side. On Monday, India hopes to launch a robotic probe, the delayed Chandrayaan-2 lander that is bound for the unchartered lunar south pole.

Far more is on the cards. Major space agencies, including ESA and Nasa, plan a “lunar gateway”, described by Wörner as a “bus stop to the moon and beyond”. His vision is for a “moon village”, but rather than a sprawl of domes, shops and a cosy pub, it is more an agreement between nations and industry to cooperate on lunar projects.

The private sector is eager to be involved. Between now and 2024, at least five companies aim to launch lunar landers. In May, Nasa selected three companies to design, build and operate spacecraft that will ferry scientific experiments and technology packages to the moon.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jan Wörner, director general of the ESA. Photograph: Uwe Anspach/AFP/Getty

The coming flurry of activity may make protection more urgent. Michelle Hanlon, a space lawyer at the University of Mississippi, co-founded the non-profit organisation For all Moonkind to protect, preserve and memorialise human heritage on the moon. While she conceded that not all of the sites that bear evidence of human activity needed protection, she said many held invaluable scientific and archaeological data that we could not afford to lose. “These sites need to be protected from disruption if only for that reason,” she added.

The protection should be far wider, and more formal, than Wörner calls for, Hanlon argues. “It is astounding to me that we wouldn’t protect the site of Luna 2, the very first object humans crashed on to another celestial body, and Luna 9, the very first object humans soft-landed on another celestial body,” she said. The Soviet Luna programme sent robotic craft to the moon between 1959 and 1976.

“The director general has a much more optimistic view of human nature than I do,” Hanlon said. “I completely agree that the entities and nations headed back to the moon in the near future will take a commonsense approach and give due regard to the sites and artefacts. However, that is the near future. We have to be prepared for the company or nation that doesn’t care. Or worse, that seeks to return to the moon primarily to pillage for artefacts that will undoubtedly sell for tremendous amounts of money here on Earth.”

But Wörner believes heritage can go too far. “I would say let’s limit it to the important ones,” he said. “If you define each and everything on Earth as heritage, you cannot move and it will be the same on the moon. We should not make heritage the brake for the future.”