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NASA’s Chief Expresses Concern Over China Seizing Real Estate On The Moon 

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NASA administrator Bill Nelson recently spoke to Yahoo Finance regarding the modern day space race, and how China is set to beat the United States in their bids to get back on the moon. 

One of the reasons Nelson is so worried is because China is already preparing a series of missions to go to the moon. This week, China is planning to launch a robotic spacecraft to the side of the moon facing away from Earth. 

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The spacecraft, named Chang’e-6, will launch in what will be the first of three missions that are set to take place over the next four years. These missions could lead to China setting up a manned base on the moon’s south pole, where it is also suspected to have water. 

Nelson said that these plans show China’s lead in the modern space race. 

“I think it’s not beyond the pale that China would suddenly say, ‘We are here. You stay out.’ That would be very unfortunate — to take what has gone on on planet Earth for years, grabbing territory, and saying it’s mine and people fighting over it.”

The US has also pushed back on its Artemis program, which has the goal of bringing astronauts back into lunar orbit for the first time in 50 years. 

The program was delayed to test equipment and troubleshoot a handful of technical difficulties that they experienced during its first mission, according to Quartz. Now, NASA is expecting to launch the Artemis program and land astronauts near the south pole of the Moon by September 2026. The specific launch will be a part of the Artemis III mission.

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Nelson once told reporters that he has concerns that China will claim the water sources on the moon, “as they have done with the Spratly Islands.” The Spratly Islands are an archipelago in the South China Sea that has seen a lot of political disputes between several of its surrounding nations, according to reports. 

“When you combine [China’s] history of their politics on Planet Earth, we just need to be careful that a celestial body such as the moon, such as Mars, is open for all, and it doesn’t become a territorial grabbing. That’s what we want to avoid,” Nelson told Yahoo Finance. 

China is currently planning to have a crewed moon landing by 2030, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), who announced the goal last year. 

Nelson stated that the US would “preserve those potential reserves for the international community.” The water could potentially be used for rocket fuel. 

NASA and the Department of State introduced the Artemis Accords in 2020, which guarantees cooperation and collaboration between nations regarding the information and resources utilized for future lunar missions. 39 countries have signed the accords, however, China is not one of them.

moon

Up To 100 Space Missions To The Moon To Take Place In The Next Decade 

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Scientists are estimating that as many as 100 lunar missions could be completed within the next decade as interest in the moon heightens. Many nations and private companies have expressed interest in the moon, and cislunar space, referring to the area between Earth and the moon. 

According to the executive director of Astralytical, a space consulting firm based in Atlanta, Laura Forczyk: “We’re already seeing this competing rhetoric between the US government and the Chinese government. The US is pointing to China and saying, ‘We need to fund our space initiatives to the moon and cislunar space because China is trying to get there and claim territory. And then Chinese politicians are saying the same thing about the United States.”

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Both the US and China currently have plans for lunar exploration programs involving bringing astronauts to the moon, as well as researching the possibility of building habitats and infrastructure in the moon’s orbit and on its surface. 

South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Russia are also interested in planning out lunar missions. Commercial companies such as SpaceX have already begun preparing to launch a private crew on a “tourism flight in lunar orbit” this year as well, according to reports from NBC News. 

“During the Cold War, the space race was for national prestige and power. Now, we have a better understanding of the kind of benefits that operating in cislunar space can bring countries back home,” said Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director and fellow of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Forczyk added that “with so many lunar missions planned over the next decade, space agencies and commercial companies will likely be angling for strategic orbits and trajectories.”

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“It might seem like space is big, but the specific orbits that we are most interested in get filled up fast,” Forczyk explained.

“Much of the increased activity in cislunar space owes to substantial decreases in launch costs over the past decade, with advancements in technology and increased competition both driving down the price of sending objects into orbit. At the same time, planetary science missions offered humanity a glimpse of the resources available in space, ranging from ice deposits on the moon to precious metals in asteroids,” said Marcus Holzinger, an associate professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Once people started really thinking through that, they realized that that water-ice can provide substantial resources or enable the gathering or collection of resources elsewhere in the solar system,” he stated.

“If humans intend to establish a permanent presence on the moon, and venture beyond Mars, it will be imperative to prioritize safety, sustainability and transparency, said Jim Myers, senior vice president of the civil systems group at The Aerospace Corporation.

“Those elements have to be there. Unless we do this in a very thoughtful way, unless we plan, we’re going to run into all sorts of trouble.”

asteroid

NASA To Slam Probe Into Asteroid for Planetary Defense Test

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On Sept. 26, NASA will slam a probe into an asteroid during its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission. The mission is part of NASA’s larger planetary defense plan against any asteroids that may someday impact the Earth.

If an asteroid were to hurl toward Earth in the future, a probe like the one used in DART should be able to realign its trajectory or destroy it, neutralizing its threat.

One of the engineers orchestrating the mission acknowledges, “this is an amazing moment for our space program.”

“For the first time, we will move a celestial body intentionally in space, beyond Earth’s orbit! This test goes beyond international borders and really shows what we can accomplish if we all work together as one team and as one on Earth.”

NASA mapped the orbits of 30,000 nearby asteroids and determined that, as of right now, most of them are unlikely to collide with Earth or are so small that they would burn up in the atmosphere before any significant impact.

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The last time an asteroid collided with Earth, it ended the age of dinosaurs some 66 million years ago. The 6-mile wide asteroid Chicxulub killed over 75% of the Earth’s species, triggering a mass extinction event. Earthquakes reverberated throughout the crust; wildfires spread in all directions from the asteroid’s impact, and mammoth tsunamis engulfed dry land.

NASA does not want to rule out that an asteroid may hit Earth in the future. The probe will impact an asteroid named Dimorphos, which orbits another asteroid named Didymos, nearly the Earth’s size. Its mission is to realign Dimorphos and change the duration of its orbit by 11 minutes.

The agency says this will determine if a strategy like DART would successfully prevent planetary threats posed by asteroids by gauging how asteroids respond to kinetic impact. The stakes of the test are low since it poses no threat to Earth, but the agency says the difficulty of the maneuver will remain the same.

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During a news conference, Andrea Riley, a program executive at NASA, spoke on the importance of the DART test. The probe will only be able to detect Dimorphos an hour and a half before impact, making this an accurate test of its precision. Once the probe detects the asteroid, it will autonomously guide itself into a collision.

“If it misses, it still provides a lot of data. This is a test mission. This is why we test; we want to do it now rather than when there is an actual need.”

NASA will hold a televised briefing for the test at 6 p.m. on Sept. 26. NASA TV will then provide live coverage of the impact, predicted to be at 7:14 p.m. EDT the same day.

Jeff Bezos Is Going To Space

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Jeff Bezos announced this week that he would be joining the flight crew on their first mission using the New Shepard rocket ship from Bezos’s space company, Blue Origin, on a trip to space. The flight is currently scheduled for July 20th; 15 days after Bezos will resign as CEO of Amazon. 

“Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend.”

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Mark Bezos, Jeff’s brother, will be joining the flight, and if all goes to plan, Bezos will become the first billionaire tech space tycoons to experience a ride for themselves into space. Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX, hasn’t even mentioned the possibility of him joining one of his crews into space.

British billionaire Richard Branson owns Virgin Galactic, another space company which is planning on conducting flights to suborbital space for wealthy billionaires who want to take a trip out into the atmosphere. 

The six-seater 59-foot-long rocket is set to launch 60 miles above the Earth in an 11-minute flight this July. The New Shepard rocket has been undergoing extensive and secretive testing for the past six years, and although Blue Origin hasn’t announced yet when it will begin selling tickets for future space trips, it’s already rumored that tickets will cost close to $3 million. 

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Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, just one year after Amazon as a platform was initially valued at one billion dollars. While Bezos is resigning from his executive chair role,. He will still be involved in the company’s inner workings. 

Blue Origin is also currently working on a rocket called New Glenn, which the company is hoping will be able to send US government and commercial satellites into orbit and make easy trips to deep space. 

Bezos has called Blue Origin “the most important work [he’s]doing.”

“I’m interested in space because I’m passionate about it. I’ve been studying it and thinking about it since I was a five year old boy — but that is not why I’m pursuing this work. I’m pursuing this work because I believe if we don’t, we will eventually end up with a civilization of stasis, which I find very demoralizing,” he explained. 

Blue Origin initially was hoping to be involved in NASA’s personal mission of returning humans to the moon by 2024, however, SpaceX beat them to it when they landed a contract to build a lunar lander recently. NASA has claimed Blue Origin is still eligible to work on future lunar missions, but their focus on bringing regular people to space has diminished their chance of working with the space organization directly on lunar missions. 

Spaceship

India Announces They’ll Be Sending Humans To Space For The First Time

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India is looking to become the fourth nation in the world to send its citizens into space. America, China, and Russia are the only other countries in the world to hold the same honor. The plan is to send four astronauts up into space in 2022. The identities of these individuals have been kept anonymous for now, as plans for the space mission are still in their preliminary stages. 

According to sources, India has been developing a spacecraft, known as Gaganyaan, that would let up to three individuals go into space and orbit the Earth for up to a week. The announcement came from the India Space Research Organization, or ISRO, which held a press conference about the mission on New Year’s Day. 

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Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Kailasavadivoo Sivan 

During the conference Kailasavadivoo Sivan, ISRO’s chairman pictured above, briefed over 100 media personnel about the mission and the four astronauts’ intensive training, which he mentioned would begin in Russia in a couple of weeks.

In addition to their first human-made space journey, ISRO is hoping to make up for their failed moon rover mission from 2018. Last year, India sent a small solar-powered space rover to the moon in order to land and collect data. However, the rover, known as the Chandrayaan-2, unfortunately crashed during a failed landing. ISRO states that the crash was due to a system malfunction that tampered with the landing gears in the rover. However, this incident was after a rather successful first moon rover mission from 2008. 

“India’s first successful lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, put a spacecraft in orbit around the moon in 2008 and then later sent a probe hurtling toward the moon’s south pole, where it deliberately crashed and released material that was analyzed by the orbiter’s scientific instruments, helping to confirm the presence of water ice on the Moon,” according to Nell Greenfieldboyce, who covered ISRO’s recent conference.

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Now, ISRO is hoping to make up for that malfunction by sending their newest rover, the Chandrayaan-3, to the moon. That mission is completely separate from the Gaganyaan mission; however, both were recently approved by the Indian government, so the announcements were made together. 

“The Chandrayaan-2 mission also included an orbiting spacecraft, however, that is still circling the moon and functioning well. That means it can be used by Chandrayaan-3’s rover to relay communications back to Earth,” said Greenfieldboyce. 

Since the first two space rover missions, India’s space program received a huge boost in public and political interest. Funding increased, and so did a desire for further exploration and expansion into the unknown.

Back in 2014, the ISRO was able to learn even more by putting a satellite into Mars’ orbit. At the time, this was a huge deal for India’s space program as they got to Mars before China, their biggest rival in terms of technology and space exploration. This made India the first Asian country to make it to Mars as well as the first nation in the world to reach it on their first attempt without any malfunctions.

The Chandrayaan-3 moon rover mission will likely occur before India is able to send their astronauts up into space, but both projects are predicted to launch within the next two to three years.