A new space race? China adds urgency to US return to moon

WASHINGTON (AP):

It’s not just rocket fuel propelling America’s first moonshot after a half-century lull. Strategic rivalry with China’s ambitious space programme is helping drive NASA’s effort to get back into space in a bigger way, as both nations push to put people back on the moon and establish the first lunar bases.

American intelligence, military and political leaders make clear they see a host of strategic challenges to the US in China’s space programme, in an echo of the US-Soviet rivalry that prompted the 1960s’ race to the moon. That’s as China is quickly matching US civil and military space accomplishments and notching up new ones of its own.

On the military side, the US and China trade accusations of weaponising space. Senior US defence officials warn that China and Russia are building capabilities to take out the satellite systems that underpin US intelligence, military communications and early-warning networks.

There’s also a civilian side to the space race. The US is wary of China taking the lead in space exploration and commercial exploitation, and pioneering the technological and scientific advances that would put China ahead in power in space and in prestige down on Earth.

“In a decade, the United States has gone from the unquestioned leader in space to merely one of two peers in a competition,” Senator Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, declared this week at a Senate Armed Services hearing. “Everything our military does relies on space.”

At another hearing last year, NASA administrator Bill Nelson brandished an image transmitted by a Chinese rover that had just plunked down on Mars. “The Chinese government ... they’re going to be landing humans on the moon” soon, he said. “That should tell us something about our need to get off our duff.”

NASA, the US civilian space agency, is awaiting a new launch date this month or in October for its Artemis 1 uncrewed test moonshot. Technical problems scrubbed the first two launch attempts in recent weeks.

China, likewise, aims to send astronauts to the moon this decade, as well as establish a robotic research station there. Both the US and China intend to establish bases for intermittent crews on the moon’s south pole after that.

Russia has aligned with China’s moon programme, while 21 nations have joined a US-initiated effort meant to bring guidelines and order to the civil exploration and development of space.

The parallel efforts come 50 years after US astronauts last pulled shut the doors on an Apollo module and blasted away from the moon, in December 1972.

Some space policy experts bat down talk of a new space race, seeing big differences from John F. Kennedy’s Cold War drive to outdo the Soviet Union’s Sputnik and be the first to get people on the moon. This time, both the US and China see moon programmes as a stepping stone in phased programmes towards exploring, settling and potentially exploiting the resources and other untapped economic and strategic opportunities offered by the moon, Mars, and space at large.

Beyond the gains in technology, science and jobs that accompany space programmes, Artemis promoters point to the potential of mining minerals and frozen water on the moon, or using the moon as a base to go prospecting on asteroids – the Trump administration in particular emphasised the mining prospects. There’s potential in tourism and other commercial efforts.