Race to the Moon
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China has a goal to surpass the United States by 2045, but US politicians say that isn’t an option
The delays in NASA’s Artemis program are making Congress nervous. NASA has announced that it’s now targeting T September 2025 for its Artemis II mission, which will send four astronauts around the Moon, and September 2026 for Artemis III, which will put boots on Earth’s nearest neighbour for the first time in more than half a century. These new Artemis launch dates represent delays of about a year for each flight. The rightward push was spurred by the need to conduct more studies of key Artemis hardware, such as the heatshield of NASA’s Orion crew capsule, which didn’t perform quite as expected during the uncrewed Artemis I mission in late 2022.
The US House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space and Technology held a hearing about the new Artemis plan, and multiple members voiced concern. “I remind my colleagues that we are not the only country interested in sending humans to the Moon,” committee chairman Frank Lucas said in his opening remarks. “The Chinese Communist Party is actively soliciting international partners for a lunar mission – a lunar research station – and has stated its ambition to have human astronauts on the surface by 2030,” he added. “The country that lands first will have the ability to set a precedent for whether future lunar activities are conducted with openness and transparency, or in a more restricted manner.”
The committee’s ranking member, Zoe Lofgren, voiced similar sentiments: “Let me be clear. I support Artemis,” she said. “But I want it to be successful, especially with China at our heels. And we want to be helpful here in the committee in ensuring that Artemis is strong and staying on track.” Several other committee members stressed that the new Moon race is part of a broader competition with China, and that coming in second could imperil US national security. “It’s no secret that China has a goal to surpass the US by 2045 as global leaders in space. We can’t allow this to happen,” Rich McCormick said. “I think the leading edge that we have in space technology will protect the US – not just the economy, but technologies that can benefit humankind.”
Four witnesses gave testimony during the hearing: Catherine Koerner, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate; George Scott, the agency’s acting inspector general; William Russell, director of contracting and national security acquisitions at the US Government Accountability Office, and Mike Griffin, who served as NASA administrator from 2005 to 2009. Russell and Scott discussed the challenges going forward for Artem
