Some parts of the moon, including the Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 landing sites, will be listed by NASA as off-limits, and including ground-travel buffers and no-fly zones to safeguard its historic and scientific value.

NASA has begun drafting the guidelines to protect more than three dozen "heritage sites" on the lunar face in the light of recent developments that makes the moon a target for commercial and industrial explorations.

In fact, there is the Google Lunar X Prize's offer of $20 million to any private team that lands a robotic rover on the moon's surface. An additional $4 million has been offered for any team that snaps pictures of artifacts near or at the Apollo landing sites.

According to Robert Kelso, NASA's director of lunar commercial services at Johnson Space Center in Houston, a key question is: "As the small commercial landers make preparations for possible visits to these historic sites, how do we protect these culturally significant sites from damage so that we can inspect them historically and scientifically?"

NASA's recommendations are intended to protect U.S. government artifacts on the lunar surface, such as Apollo lunar surface landing and roving hardware, unmanned lunar face landing sites, U.S. government experiments left on the lunar surface, including tools, equipment, miscellaneous moon walking gear; and specific indicators of human or human-robotic lunar presence.

Beth O'Leary, a recognized leader in the emerging field of space heritage and archaeology said, "For me, the NASA document represents a giant leap for lunar historic preservation. NASA references its ownership of its lunar hardware and the need for protecting what it calls 'witness plates' or 'lunar assets' - those significant artifacts it created in the past that are now on the moon."

"This is a critical first step and many more have to follow, but for the first time NASA formally recognizes the heritage value of Apollo 11 and other extraordinary lunar sites," she added.

O'Leary has spent more than a decade working with historians and archaeologists researching how to study and curate human artifacts on the moon. "Apollo 11 and Apollo 17 are acknowledged as having special historical and cultural significance," she said.