The moon is our closest celestial neighbor—and a prize to be won. It has already served as a battleground for one of history’s most epic technological triumphs, the race between the U.S. and the Soviets that put footprints and flags on the lunar surface. In 1969 the U.S. won that battle with NASA’s Apollo program and its “giant leap for mankind,” emerging as the clear leader in human space exploration.
Now a new race for lunar dominance is taking flight.
This time the race is not a sprint toward a single goal—landing humans on the moon—but a marathon that requires a sustained long-term presence on the lunar surface. And this time, the competitors are different: the top contenders are the U.S. and China, but a few other spacefaring nations and commercial companies are also in the game.
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The winner not only claims bragging rights but access to lunar resources, especially at the moon’s south pole, where safe landing spots are few and potential payoffs are big. The lunar poles could answer profound questions about the history of our solar system and the processes that that shaped the early Earth and the extent, distribution and origin of volatiles (such as water) on the moon. These volatiles have the power to fundamentally change how we use the moon as a resource. Potable water, breathable air and even potent rocket fuel can be created from such reservoirs, offering the power to transform humanity’s relationship with the moon, making it not only an object of reverence and study but also a staging point for our further expansion into the solar system. Whoever gets there first will set rules for how this might happen. Will the moon’s scientific and economic treasures be available to anyone? Or are they governed by strict and broadly enforced noninterference rules that benefit the winner and exclude anyone else?
Two things, at least, about this race are concerning. First, it is taking place in regulatory darkness, with few internationally agreed-upon rules and standards of behavior. Second, based on China’s faster, more steadfast progress, the U.S. is poised to lose. Recent launch delays and cuts to our lunar exploration efforts, combined with a rapid series of remarkable engineering and scientific feats from China’s space program, mean that the U.S.—and its partners—are sliding into second place right now, with potentially long-lasting consequences.
China’s lunar program is very deliberate, very focused and very successful. Named after the Chinese moon goddess Chang’e, it is structured somewhat similarly to the Apollo program that previously gave the U.S. lunar preeminence, adjusted to modern technology and science objectives. Since 2007 the Chang’e program has systematically deployed a series of increasingly complex missions, each involving more challenging technologies and objectives than the last. One key goal is to send humans to the moon and beyond, but some of these missions have already achieved unique engineering and scientific feats.
In 2019 the Chang’e 4 spacecraft landed on the far side of the moon and deployed a rover that today, more than five and a half years later, is still actively scrutinizing lunar geology, radiation and resources. As the first mission ever to visit this hidden terrain it set a major precedent in lunar exploration, showing that the far side was in reach—and not only for the U.S. China’s soaring trajectory continued in 2020, when Chang’e 5 collected and returned moon rocks from the lunar near-side—the first such robotic lunar sample return—and in May of this year when Chang’e 6 doubled down on its moon-focused momentum and collected and returned precious lunar samples from the far side. In China’s space program, technologies that enable breakthrough science are developed in tandem with capabilities of putting boots on the moon.
The U.S. lunar exploration program, in comparison, has often twisted in the political winds, inconsistent and unfocused, struggling to deliver its key elements and meet goals. Its outlines emerged in 2004, with the goal of using the moon as a stepping stone toward sending humans to Mars. In 2009 this vision abruptly changed, and new targets—an asteroid and Mars—were in. In 2017, however, NASA’s Artemis program shifted the focus back to the moon on an agencywide scale, both for sustainable exploration with commercial and international partners, and with the goal of advancing human exploration of Mars.
Yet recent decisions and budget prioritizations for Artemis reflect an overfocus on its Space Launch System (SLS), a multibillion-dollar-per-launch rocket program, at the considerable expense of broader science and technology imperatives. Bound by law to follow an agenda set by presidential administrations and by Congress, NASA has heavily invested in SLS despite horrendous management performance for the rockets and supporting elements, piling dollars and uncertainty onto an increasingly wobbly agency strategy. Now the U.S. space community is on the verge of falling back into the self-destructive circular firing squads of the early 2000s, in which competing stakeholders in human and robotic exploration waged political warfare that only created losers rather than the leadership that the nation so sorely needed.
As the U.S. has flailed, China and its partners have marched forward, notching one success after another. There is no reason to believe they will not be first to send a crewed mission to the lunar south pole, where only a half dozen or so promising regions exist to safely land. Depending on how the currently vague noninterference rules are interpreted and enforced by the Chinese (and others), significant parts of the moon might end up off-limits for anyone else to explore or mine. We do not know for certain how China might behave on the lunar surface—this is part of the conundrum—but terrestrial conflicts in the South China Sea and China’s regular infractions of sovereign airspace give scant rationale for optimism.
As mentioned before, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. And, having run several marathons myself, I know from experience that consistency and focus are the most vital ingredients for victory. That, and a clear set of rules and behavioral standards. So what must be done?
First, spacefaring nations need to start talking to each other, using science as a platform to establish dialogue. This has happened before. For example, during my more than six years at NASA, I had multiple meetings with Chinese leaders. We exchanged information about spacecraft orbits near the moon and Mars—no one is interested in collisions there that generate hazardous debris—and we had good discussions about science and data access. It’s true that some of these meetings were tougher than others to set up, but the point remains: science plays a unique role in space policy and international dialogue because of its clearly global nature; it can be a platform for interchange, assuming we can agree to the standard we want to adhere to.
Second, the international space community should engage in a series of discussions about standards of behaviors in lunar exploration—and in lunar exploitation, whether economic or otherwise. This discourse should clarify how lunar exploration can occur peacefully, avoiding carrying earthly conflicts into space.
And, finally, the U.S. needs to renew and persevere in a lunar exploration program closer to the original Artemis vision—an endeavor that combines and aligns robotic and crewed programs in a consistent strategic fashion. And the U.S. should further leverage our commercial partners that in capability now tower over all global competitors: launch providers like SpaceX and Rocket Lab as well as payload delivery companies such as Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace. This synergistic union of public and private resources is a uniquely American phenomenon that can accelerate and radically rethink space exploration.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.