“I pointed out 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. “Especially in the last 10 years, they’ve had a lot of success. 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 the landing of a rover on Mars in 2021 – the United States remains on track to return astronauts to the lunar surface before their main rival, Nelson said.
NASA plans to one day establish a lasting presence on the hottest place in the solar system: the lunar south pole. In a key step toward that goal, NASA plans to fly four astronauts around the Moon late next year, then land humans on the surface in late 2026 for the first time. times since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
“I think we’re on schedule,” Nelson said.
TO CATCH UP
Stories to keep you informed
This schedule, however, has been pushed back several times due to technical challenges, including the desire to better understand the performance of the heat shield of the capsule intended to transport astronauts to and from the vicinity of the Moon. During a test flight around the Moon in 2022 with no one on board, the heat shield of NASA’s Orion spacecraft “wore differently than expected” in more than 100 places during its dive into the Moon. atmosphere, according to a report published in the spring by NASA. Inspector General. 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 concludes.
NASA’s plan to return humans to the surface is complex and requires Orion to orbit them around the moon and then have a separate spacecraft – SpaceX’s spacecraft – transport them to the lunar surface. Starship would then bring the astronauts back to meet Orion in lunar orbit for the return trip to Earth.
Given Starship’s important role in surface landing, NASA is closely monitoring its development. SpaceX recently completed the fourth test flight of the massive vehicle, the largest and most powerful ever built, taking it across most of the world in what the company called a largely successful flight that will allow it to continue to develop it quickly.
Nelson said “a good indicator of” NASA’s ability to reach the Moon before China “was SpaceX’s success on its last Starship flight.” But Elon Musk’s company has yet to demonstrate that 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., complicated tasks that could take years to complete.
The United States and China ultimately aim to establish camps near the Moon’s south pole, where water in the form of ice is found in its permanently shadowed craters. Not only is water vital for sustaining life, but its components, oxygen and hydrogen, can also be used as rocket fuel, enabling further exploration of the solar system.
Despite competition between the United States and China, the two countries will need to find a way to coexist on and around the Moon, Nelson said. The two countries’ space programs are also linked, he said, by space threats.
U.S. officials say Russia is developing a nuclear weapon that could be used in Earth orbit to destroy satellites and cripple key U.S. national security infrastructure used for, among other things, missile warnings, reconnaissance and munitions guidance precision. Russia has denied plans to deploy a nuclear weapon in space.
Still, it should concern all nations with assets in space, Nelson said, and particularly China, which operates not only a growing number of spacecraft that could be disabled by a nuclear blast, but also a crewed space station.
Speaking publicly about the threat for the first time, he said: “All nations should be concerned that Russia may intend to place 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, weather, agricultural, commercial and national security services on which we all depend.
He added that “this is an opening for the Chinese government, whose astronauts and Chinese space station would be threatened by the deployment of a Russian nuclear bomb in space. … They have an interest in Russia not deploying nuclear weapons. So would they use their stance on Russia and the relationship between (Chinese President) Xi Jinping and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to get Russians to rethink this situation?
Installing a nuclear weapon in 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 State Department have sought to lead a growing international coalition under what is known as the Artemis Accords, 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 operating covertly and as a branch of the military, signatories to the accords agree to respect accepted norms of behavior in space, on and around the Moon. Countries would be required to share their scientific findings, for example, and detail where they operate on the lunar surface and what they do.
In the meantime, NASA’s lunar campaign continues. This year, the space agency hopes that one of its commercial partners, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, will land its second uncrewed spacecraft on the Moon, and that other private landers will follow in coming years. . Earlier this year, its spacecraft became the first commercial vehicle to land on the Moon and the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land since the Apollo era.
But for all the talk of a space race with China, astronauts who are part of the Artemis mission planned to fly around the Moon in 2025 said they don’t really 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 it’s a race. We think this is the right direction for exploration, and this is the direction we are heading.
He added: “But as an American, I feel there is increasing pressure. »