“I made it clear in my comments that we are in a space race with the Chinese, and they are very good,” he said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “They have had a lot of success, especially in the past ten years. They usually say what they mean, and do what they say.”
But despite China’s many achievements in space — including an occupied space station in low Earth orbit and landing a rover on Mars in 2021 — the United States remains on track to return astronauts to space ahead of its chief rival. lunar surface, Nelson said.
NASA plans to one day build a lasting presence on the hottest real estate in the solar system: the moon’s south pole. In a major step toward that goal, NASA plans to fly four astronauts around the moon late next year, then land humans on its 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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However, that schedule has been pushed back several times due to technical challenges, including an effort to better understand the performance of the capsule’s heat shield, intended to carry astronauts to and from the lunar environment. During a test flight around the moon in 2022 without anyone aboard, the heat shield of NASA’s Orion spacecraft wore out in more than 100 places “differently than expected” as it plummeted through the atmosphere, according to a report released in the spring by NASA’s Inspector General. In some places it looked like chunks had been torn off, leaving hole-like scars in the material.
“Should the same problem occur on future Artemis missions, it could result in the loss of the vehicle or crew,” the report concludes.
NASA’s plan to return humans to the surface is complicated. Orion will have to orbit them around the moon, and then use a separate spacecraft – SpaceX’s Starship – to transport them to the moon’s surface. The spaceship would then fly the astronauts back to rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit for the return trip to Earth.
Given Starship’s important role in landing on the 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, flying it around most of the world in what the company said was a largely successful flight that will allow it to continue developing it rapidly .
Nelson said that “a good indication of” NASA’s ability to get to the moon before China “was SpaceX’s success on their last Starship flight.” But Elon Musk’s company still needs to demonstrate that the vehicle can be refueled in orbit by a fleet of tankers, fly humans safely and land softly on the moon – all highly ambitious., complicated tasks that can take years.
Both the US and China eventually aim to set up encampments at the moon’s south pole, where water in the form of ice resides in the permanently shadowed craters. Not only is water vital to life, but its constituent parts, 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 will have to find a way to coexist on and around the moon, Nelson said. According to him, the space programs of both countries are also linked by threats in space.
U.S. officials have said Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be used in orbit to destroy satellites and cripple key U.S. national security infrastructure used for tasks including missile warning, reconnaissance and precision munition guidance. Russia has denied plans to place a nuclear weapon in space.
Still, it should concern all countries with assets in space, 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.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the threat, he said: “All countries should be concerned that Russia is planning to put a nuclear weapon into orbit. Such a capability could threaten all satellites operated by countries and companies around the world, as well as the vital communications, scientific, meteorological, agricultural, commercial and national security services on which we all depend.
He added that “this is an opening 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 developing nuclear weapons. In this way, they would also use their position vis-à-vis Russia and the relationship between them [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin should urge the Russians to reconsider this?”
Installing a nuclear weapon in orbit would be a violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. And as China and Russia continue to rival the U.S. in space, NASA and the State Department have sought to lead a growing international coalition under what is known as the Artemis Accords, perhaps the most important international space policy effort since the 1967 treaty.
In an effort to pressure China’s space program, which Nelson and others have criticized for operating in secret and as a branch of the military, the accords’ signatories agree to adhere to accepted standards of behavior in space and on and around the moon. For example, countries should share scientific discoveries and detail where on the lunar surface they operate and what they do.
In the meantime, NASA’s moon campaign continues. This year, the space agency hopes one of its commercial partners, a Houston company Intuitive Machines, will land its second unmanned spacecraft on the moon, with other privately developed landers to follow in the coming years. Earlier this year, the spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to land on the moon and the first U.S. spacecraft to land softly since the Apollo era.
But for all the talk of a space race with China, astronauts part of the planned Artemis mission to fly around the moon in 2025 said they don’t quite see it that way.
The flight’s commander, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman, said at a recent Washington Post Live event: “We don’t feel like this is a race. We feel like this is exactly the right direction for exploration, and that’s the direction we’re going.”
He added: “But as an American, I feel like pressure is building.”