NASA chief: USA on schedule in race with China for moon landing

After another Chinese spacecraft landed on the lunar surface earlier this month, this time to retrieve samples from the far side of the moon, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated a country that is challenging the United States’ long-standing dominance in space. He said he was impressed by the country’s fourth successful moon landing.

“I’ve made it pretty clear in my comments that we’re in a space race with the Chinese and they’re very good,” he said in a recent interview with the Washington Post. “Especially in the last decade, they’ve been very successful. Usually they say what they mean and they do what they say.”

But despite China’s numerous successes in space – including a crewed space station in low Earth orbit and the landing of a rover on Mars in 2021 – the U.S. remains on track to return astronauts to the lunar surface ahead of its main rival, Nelson said.

NASA plans to one day establish a permanent presence at the hottest place in the solar system: the moon’s south pole. In a major step toward that goal, NASA aims to fly four astronauts around the moon late next year and land humans on the surface in late 2026 for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

“I think we’re right on schedule,” Nelson said.

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But that timeline has been pushed back several times due to technical challenges, including trying to better understand the performance of the heat shield on the capsule that will carry astronauts near the moon and back again. During a test flight around the moon in 2022 without humans aboard, the heat shield on NASA’s Orion spacecraft “wore differently than expected” in more than 100 places as it plunged into the atmosphere, according to a report released in the spring by NASA’s inspector general. In some places, it looked like pieces had been ripped out, leaving pothole-like scars in the material.

“If the same problem were to occur on future Artemis missions, it could result in the loss of the vehicle or crew,” the report concluded.

NASA’s plan to return humans to the surface is complicated: It requires Orion to take them into the moon’s orbit, and then a separate spacecraft – SpaceX’s Starship – to transport them to the lunar surface. Starship would then fly the astronauts back to rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit for the trip back to Earth.

Given Starship’s important role in landing on the Earth’s surface, NASA is closely monitoring its development. SpaceX recently conducted the fourth test flight of the massive vehicle, the largest and most powerful ever built, circling almost the entire Earth. The company said the flight was largely successful and will allow the company to continue development of the vehicle at a rapid pace.

Nelson said a “good indicator” of NASA’s ability to get to the moon before China is “SpaceX’s success on their last Starship flight.” But Elon Musk’s company still has to prove the vehicle can be refueled in Earth orbit by a fleet of tanker spacecraft, fly humans safely and land softly on the moon – all very ambitious goals., complicated tasks that could take years to complete.

Both the US and China ultimately aim to build camps at the moon’s south pole, where water in the form of ice exists in its permanently shadowed craters. Not only is water essential to life, but its components, oxygen and hydrogen, can also be used as rocket fuel, allowing further exploration of the solar system.

Despite the competition between the US and China, the two countries must find a way to coexist on and around the moon, Nelson said. The two countries’ space programs are also linked by threats from space, he said.

US authorities have said Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be deployed in Earth orbit to destroy satellites and disable key US national security infrastructure used for missile warning, reconnaissance and precision-guided weapons, among other functions. Russia has denied that it intends to deploy a nuclear weapon in space.

Still, this should worry all nations that have space resources, Nelson said, and especially China, which operates not only a growing number of spacecraft that could be disabled by a nuclear explosion but also a manned space station.

When he first spoke publicly about the threat, he said: “All nations should be concerned that Russia may intend to put a nuclear weapon into orbit. Such a capability could pose a threat to all satellites operated by countries and companies around the world, as well as to the vital communications, science, weather, agriculture, commerce and national security services on which we all depend.”

He added: “This is an opportunity for the Chinese government, whose Chinese astronauts and space station would be threatened by the deployment of a Russian nuclear bomb in space. … They have an interest in Russia not using nuclear weapons. So would they change their position towards Russia and the relationship between [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [Russian President Vladimir] Should Putin urge Russians to reconsider their opinions?”

Installing a nuclear weapon in Earth orbit would be a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. And as China and Russia continue to compete with the United States in space, NASA and the U.S. State Department are seeking to lead a growing international coalition under the so-called Artemis Accords, which may represent the most significant international space policy since the 1967 treaty.

To put pressure on China’s space program, which Nelson and others see as secret and a military arm, the signatories of the agreement agree to abide by accepted rules of conduct in space and on and around the moon. For example, countries would have to share scientific discoveries with each other and detail where they are operating on the lunar surface and what they are doing.

Meanwhile, NASA’s lunar campaign continues. This year, the space agency hopes one of its commercial partners, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, will land its second unmanned spacecraft on the moon, with more privately developed landers expected to follow in the coming years. Earlier this year, the company’s spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to land on the moon and the first American spacecraft since the Apollo era to make a soft touchdown.

But despite all the rumors of a space race with China, astronauts taking part in the planned Artemis mission, which is scheduled to orbit the moon in 2025, said they don’t quite see it that way.

The flight’s commander, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, recently said during a Washington Post live event, “We don’t feel like this is a race. We believe this is exactly the right direction for exploration, and that’s the direction we’re moving in.”

He added: “But as an American, I feel the pressure is increasing.”

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