Hanlon also says she believes advancing the discussion on preservation is a non-confrontational way to launch a broader conversation about property and mining rights in space. And she hopes getting nations to agree on heritage sites that are out of this world could pave the way for consensus on other critical space issues.

“If we can agree that there are places on the moon that we need to protect, that’s one way of figuring out how we’re going to zone and create the concept of if, not property ownership, at least title or mining rights,” she told POLITICO.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

What prompted you to want to save the moon sites?

It started with a quote from the head of the European Space Agency. … He said, “I like to joke that we need to get back to the moon if only to take down those American flags.” It hit a nerve with me. He was totally joking, but it was like, wait a minute, can they do that? … Anybody can run over those boot prints with impunity.

But it got bigger than that. … We’re not all going to sit around the table and sing Kumbaya tomorrow, but this is a baby step to getting all nations to agree. We haven’t agreed on anything enforceable in space since the ‘70s, but 193 countries on Earth have acceded to the [list of] World Heritage sites. … We all agree on preservation. If we can take that, and help it form basis of future agreements in space.

So you hope a consensus to protect the lunar landing sites would lead to other agreements?

Absolutely. … The concept of preservation gets at the next big issue in space, which is property ownership and mining. How do we figure out who gets to mine what and what happens to the resources extracted? … If we can agree that there are places on the moon that we need to protect, that’s one way of figuring out how we’re going to zone and create the concept of if, not property ownership, at least title or mining rights. We think starting that conversation about property in space with preservation is sort of unifying.

Tell me more about For All Moonkind.

The nonprofit will have its two year anniversary in July. I was at McGill [University in Quebec] getting my master’s in space law. My husband was in Connecticut. After many late night Skype calls tying myself in knots [with concern about the lunar landing sites], he said let’s do something about it. … We are going to go back to the moon in droves. Right now it’s a trickle, but we know how fast a trickle turns into a flood. … What’s going to happen when all of a sudden people are going back and forth to the moon all the time? How do we want to treat not just the Apollo sites, but also others like [Indian mission] Chandrayaan or Beresheet, [a commercial Israeli lunar mission that recently crashed into the surface of the moon]? We certainly don’t suggest they should all be protected and preserved, but we have to think about how we manage that.

We’ve grown to about 75 members from all around the world. … We became permanent observers to the United Nations in December 2018. … We’re planning to create a manual to be completed by June 2020 that would just lay out all the issues, and different ways we can solve them. One example: If you designate a historic site and say other people can’t go there, does that violate free use of outer space?

We’re also creating a digital registry, a catalogue of all of the sites with human material on the moon. … We’d like to build a committee on figuring out what needs to be protected and how it should be protected around this registry. The first issue is we don’t really know what’s up there. NASA has a list, but it’s not updated constantly.

What would you like to see happen to the landing site?

Ideally it would be a park. The whole point of preserving the boot print is so my children can go see it and laugh about how funny the [Lunar Excursion Module] looks. I was inspired growing up by going to historic sites. At Williamsburg, I thought, “That’s how they made butter. They didn’t have refrigerators. How did they manage a revolution under these conditions?” … For us, it’s about keeping these sites as a source of inspiration. I talk a lot about the … moon village. The heart of a village is its history. … You could walk around it the way you walk around Stonehenge today. A … student came up with the idea of cable cars that could stretch from [the Russian] Luna 2 [site] and zig zag over the historic sites. We absolutely believe the sites should be awed over.

What can Congress do?

We did work with Sen. [Gary] Peters’ staff on the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act. That’s a great first step because it shows again U.S. leadership in space and understanding preservation is a big deal. It would just make it so people who want to get a license from the U.S. to conduct activities on the moon would have to agree to abide byNASA’s guidelines.

[The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space] has done a really great job of keeping space peaceful. … What’s really fantastic is people are there and they’re talking to each other. They may not agree, but they all listen. They are the ideal body to talk about preservation in space. What we need is an international convention, no question. … We need to figure out how we’re going to delineate who is where and who does what where.

That’s different from actually who will decide. Right now the [United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization] administers the World Heritage Centre. I don’t think COPUOS wants to administer a universal heritage center. There might be a separate body created by a treaty to make decisions about what should be protected and how.