Helen Sharman warns big business could one day own the Moon

And the 61-year-old scientist also posed the question of which Earth superpower could one day lay claim to owning the Moon, or at least parts of it!

The former resident of Grenoside and Greenhill was discussing contentious issues of space colonisation and commercialisation on a BBC podcast.

She warned how Britain had fallen behind in space exploration, discussed the dangers of space junk and pollution before moving on to the possibility of "land grabs" on the Moon.

India and China have despatched lunar landing craft in recent times, following pathfinding from America and Russia.

However, there is concern that the spirit of exploration was being overtaken by the prospect of making huge profits out of Moon minerals and using the natural satellite as an energy source.

"We talk about the lunar economy 2035, so in just a few years time, we think that that lunar economy could be 1.8 trillion dollars" she told BBC Newscast.

"It's enormous so loads of countries want to have a part of that."

Helen, the first British person and Western European woman to go to space, said big businesses were attracted to elements "that we use in a lot of electronics industry and batteries."

In 1967, The Outer Space Treaty, an international agreement establishing rules for how countries should act in space, was signed by some nations - but not all, she pointed out.

It stated that: "No one country, no nation-state, can own another celestial body so you can't own the Moon but actually that was set up in the Cold War and it's not so relevant in today's very commercial environment" said Helen.

"NASA had to put out a sort of some regulations that said any country, any company, can just go up and use the Moon...mine bits of the Moon" she added.

An accord stated that: "If you've got a mining operation on the surface of the moon no other company or country can come in interfere with that which is tantamount to saying it's a landgrab once you're there."

While it was an exciting prospect that mankind could "generate clean energy and microwave it back to Earth" the thorny topic of exactly who would own that energy was debatable.

The former Jordanthorpe Comprehensive pupil said she was fairly certain: "Russia wants to collaborate with China" in Moon exploitation, adding: "We're going to end up with a different kind of perhaps a Cold War in space."

That made it imperative that nations tackled the ethics underpinning the exploitation of other worlds.

"Now is a time to get a grip and unite properly because we've got things like asteroids we need to be concerned about...which is the world against the rest of space" said Dr Sharman, an Honorary Fellow at Hallam University who was also awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science degree at the University of Sheffield.

The Sheffielder went to space back in 1991...and says she would love to do it again.

But she conceded that wasn't likely any time soon.