It’s hard to care about bootprints sunk in soil 238,900 miles away as humanity suffers the combined burden of an unforgiving virus and a political unease. But how humans treat those bootprints and the historic lunar landing sites upon which they are found will speak volumes about who we humans are and who we seek to become.

On Dec. 31, the One Small Step to Protect Human Heritage in Space Act became law. As far as laws go, it’s pretty benign. It requires companies that are working with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on lunar missions to agree to be bound by otherwise unenforceable guidelines intended to protect American landing sites on the Moon. That’s a pretty small pool of affected entities. However, it is also the first law enacted by any nation that recognizes the existence of human heritage in outer space. //

But what about a derelict spacecraft, like the Eagle, the Apollo 11 lunar lander? Do we really want to rely on “due regard” to prevent the intentional or inadvertent destruction of this inspiring piece of history? This object memorializes the work of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who worked to put a human on the Moon, the astronauts and cosmonauts who gave their lives in this quest to reach the stars, and the quiet heroes, like Katherine Johnson, who fueled the math that made it so.

The lunar landing sites – from Luna 2, the first human made object to impact the Moon, to each of the crewed Apollo missions, to Chang-e 4, which deployed the first rover on the far side of the Moon – in particular bear witness to humanity’s greatest technological achievement thus far. They symbolize all we have accomplished as a species, and hold such promise for the future. //

The One Small Step Act is true to its name. It’s a small step. It applies only to companies that are working with NASA; it pertains only to U.S. lunar landing sites; it implements outdated and untested recommendations to protect historic lunar sites implemented by NASA in 2011. However, it offers significant breakthroughs. It is the first legislation from any nation to recognize an off-Earth site as having “outstanding universal value” to humanity, language taken from the unanimously ratified World Heritage Convention.