“I was quite implied in my remarks that we are in a space race with the Chinese and that they are very good,” he said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “Especially in the last 10 years, they have had great success. They usually say what they mean and follow through on what they say.”
But despite China’s many successes in space — which include a manned space station in low Earth orbit and the landing of a rover on Mars in 2021 — the United States remains ahead of its archrival in returning astronauts to the lunar surface, Nelson said.
NASA plans to one day build a permanent presence on the hottest real estate in the solar system: the moon’s south pole. As a key step toward that goal, NASA intends to fly four astronauts around the moon late next year and then land humans on the surface in late 2026 for the first time since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
“I think we’re going right on schedule,” Nelson said.
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However, that plan has been pushed back several times due to technical issues, including efforts to better understand the heat shield performance of the capsule designed to fly astronauts to and from the Moon. During a test flight around the moon in 2022 with no one aboard, the heat shield of NASA’s Orion spacecraft “worn differently than expected” in more than 100 places as it plunged into the atmosphere, according to a report released this spring by NASA. inspector. In some places, it looked like pieces had been torn off, leaving pothole-like scars in the material.
“If the same problem occurs 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, requiring Orion to get them into orbit around the moon and then a separate spacecraft — SpaceX’s spacecraft — to deliver them to the lunar surface. The starship would then fly the astronauts back to rendezvous with Orion in lunar orbit and the return journey back to Earth.
Due to the important role of the starship in landing on the surface, NASA closely monitors its development. SpaceX recently conducted the fourth test flight of the massive vehicle, the largest and most powerful ever built, and flew it most of the way around the globe, a very successful flight that the company says will allow it to continue its rapid development.
Nelson said a “good indicator” of NASA’s ability to get to the moon before China “was SpaceX’s success with their last starship flight.” However, Elon Musk’s company still needs to prove that the vehicle can be refueled in Earth orbit by a fleet of tankers, fly safely with humans and land softly on the moon – all very ambitious., complex tasks that can take years to achieve.
Both the US and China ultimately aim to set up camps at the moon’s south pole, where water is in the form of ice in its permanently shadowed craters. Not only is water vital to sustaining life, but its components, oxygen and hydrogen, can also be used as rocket fuel, enabling further exploration of the solar system.
Despite the competition between the U.S. 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.
US officials have said Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be used in Earth orbit to destroy satellites and cripple key US national security infrastructure used for missile warning, reconnaissance and precision munitions guidance, among other things. Russia has denied that it intends to deploy a nuclear weapon in space.
Still, it should concern all nations with assets in space, Nelson said, and especially China, which operates not only a growing number of spacecraft that could be destroyed by a nuclear blast, but also a manned space station.
Speaking publicly about the threat for the first time, 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 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 are interested in Russia not giving nuclear weapons. They would thus take advantage of their position with Russia and the relationship between them [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin urged Russians to reconsider?
Installing a nuclear weapon in orbit would violate the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. And as China and Russia continue to compete with the U.S. in space, NASA and the State Department have sought to lead a growing international coalition under what are known as the Artemis Accords, which is perhaps the most significant international space policy effort since the 1967 treaty.
In an effort to put pressure on China’s space program, which Nelson and others have criticized as a covert operation and part of the military, signatories to the accords pledge to adhere to accepted norms of behavior in space and on and around the moon. For example, countries would have to share scientific discoveries and describe in 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, Intuitive Machines, a Houston company, will land its second unmanned spacecraft on the moon, with more privately developed landers to follow in the coming years. Earlier this year, her spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to land on the moon and the first US spacecraft to make a soft landing since Apollo.
But for all the talk of a space race with China, astronauts on the planned Artemis mission to orbit the moon in 2025 said they don’t quite see it that way.
Flight commander NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman said during a recent Washington Post Live event that, “We don’t feel like it’s a race. We feel this is the right direction for exploration, and that’s the direction we’re going.”
He added: “But as an American, I feel the pressure is building.”