NASA Administrator Bill Nelson Says US Is in Space Race to Moon with China: NPR

There is a moon rock in the lobby of NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.

Visitors are encouraged to rub their fingers over its smooth, worn surface to connect with one of the greatest achievements in human history: the Apollo missions that took 12 American men to the moon.

The rock belongs to the last visit: Apollo 17, which returned to Earth in 1972. No one has returned to the Moon since then.

And while NASA has done amazing things time and time again since Apollo (in just the last few years, it flew a helicopter on Mars, crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid, and began to redefine our basic understanding of space with the James Webb Space Telescope). ), glory The days of the moon landing seem, at times, like ancient history.

NASA aims to change that, and soon. The Artemis program, if all goes as planned, will allow American astronauts to return to the Moon in the coming years.

However, the United States is not alone.

China hopes to land astronauts on the Moon by the end of this decade. Last week it launched a probe to collect samples from the far side of the Moon, with the aim of returning them to Earth. India and other countries have also landed unmanned spacecraft on the Moon in recent years.

This time, the space race isn’t just about who gets there first. It’s a race for resources, such as water, that could fuel greater space exploration toward Mars and other destinations.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson recently spoke with All things considered about the agency’s ambitious goals for the next decade. He told host Scott Detrow that he sees the United States in an urgent race with China and that he trusts SpaceX, despite Elon Musk’s increasingly controversial profile. He was also looking forward to the Boeing Starliner test flight scheduled for Monday.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

Scott Detrow: What is the goal here? What is the urgency here that makes (returning to the moon) so much closer to reality?

Bill Nelson: The goal is not just to return to the moon. The goal is to go to the moon to learn and be able to go further, to Mars and beyond. Now it turns out that we are going to go to another part of the moon. We will go to the South Pole, and that is attractive because we know that there is ice in the cracks of the rocks in constant shadow or darkness. And if there is indeed water, then (we can create hydrogen) rocket fuel. And later this year we will send a probe that will dig beneath the surface of the South Pole and see if there is water.

But you go to the moon and do all kinds of new things that you need to do to get to Mars. The moon is four days away. Mars, under conventional propulsion, is seven or eight months away. So we will return to the Moon to learn many things and be able to go further.

topple: Explain to me what the timeline is for Artemis right now, because this was the year that that first mission was supposed to take a crew around the moon. That has been delayed. What are we seeing right now?

Nelson: Understand, we don’t fly until it’s ready because safety is paramount. But the plan is that in September of next year, 2025, the crew of three Americans and one Canadian will circle the moon and check the spacecraft.

So the contractual date with SpaceX (to deliver the Artemis 3 rocket to take astronauts to the moon), a fixed-price contract, is one year later, September 2026.

Shatter: You said no one will go until it’s ready. Well, as you know, the Government Accountability Office submitted a report late last year that raised serious concerns and skepticism about the timeline that you laid out. Do you share that concern? Do you feel this timeline is realistic?

Nelson: Well, all I can do is look at history. When we rush things, we get into trouble and we don’t want to go through that again. I was on the space shuttle 10 days before the Challenger explosion and that’s something you don’t want to go through.

Seventeen astronauts have given their lives. Spaceflight is risky, especially going with new spacecraft and new hardware to a new destination.

That is why this launch of the Boeing Starliner is a test flight. The two astronauts, both (Butch Wilmore) and (Sunita Williams), are test pilots. If everything works well, the next will be the beginning of a cadence (of regular launches) of four astronauts in the Starliner.

Shatter: You mentioned SpaceX, you mentioned Boeing. This is a big part of the current plan, which uses private companies in a very different way. I want to ask though: SpaceX has been very successful when it comes to spaceflight, but Elon Musk’s decision making has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent years when it comes to some of his other companies, Twitter and Tesla. . His involvement in culture was politics. Are you concerned that much of this plan is in the hands of Elon Musk right now?

Nelson: Elon Musk… one of the most important decisions he made, in fact, was electing a president named Gwynne Shotwell. She runs SpaceX. She is excellent. And that’s why I have no worries.

Shatter: When you (were testing before Congress) the other day, a lot of the questions came back to China. And in the speeches he has given, he always returns to China. Why is it key for you? Why does it matter so much that the United States beats China to return to the moon?

Nelson: First of all, I don’t give many speeches about China, but people ask a lot of questions about China. And it’s important simply because I know what China has done on the face of the Earth, for example, when the Spratly Islands suddenly take over a part of the South China Sea and say, “This is ours, stay out of it.” “

I don’t want them to reach the South Pole, which is a limited area where we think the water is. It is full of craters. And that’s why there are limited areas where you can land at the South Pole. I don’t want them to come in and say, “This is ours. Stay out.”

It should be for the international community, for scientific research. That’s why I think it’s important for us to get there first.

Shatter: The United States is a party to many different treaties in terms of sharing its work with other countries. I guess people in China might hear that and say, “We’re worried about the United States doing the same thing.”

Nelson: Well, but we are the instigators with the international community, now more than 40 nations… of the Artemis Accords, which are common sense statements about the peaceful use of space, which includes working with others, which includes going to the rescue of another person, having common elements. …But China and Russia have not (signed).

Shatter: This is framed in the same terms as the space race in many ways: United States versus China. Is that how you see it?

Nelson: Regarding going to the moon? Yeah.

Shatter: And it’s specifically about ensuring that those resources around the South Pole are protected.

Nelson: And peaceful uses for all peoples. That’s basically the entire interpretation of the space treaty going back decades. It is another iteration of the declaration of peaceful uses of space.

Shatter: How else can the United States ensure that other than getting there first?

Nelson: We have many partners. And partners in general, you know, nations that get along with China and nations that get along with Russia. By the way, we get along well with Russia. Look, since 1975 in civil space, we have been cooperating with Russia in space.

Shatter: And that continued throughout the Ukrainian war, in space.

Nelson: No problem.

Shatter: So with China, how do you balance the speed and urgency and concern that you feel with the security element that we talked about earlier? Because both are very important to you.

Nelson: We don’t fly until it’s ready. That’s all.

Shatter: When he was on Capitol Hill the other day, many of the questions had to do with resources, but also concerns that China might be viewing lunar activity through a military prism. Do you share that concern?

Nelson: Yeah.

Shatter: Can you tell us what specifically worries you?

Nelson: Well, I think if you look at their space program, most of it has some connection to their military.

Shatter: So what is the solution to this from the American perspective?

Nelson: Well, let’s take the story. In the middle of the Cold War, two nations realized that they could annihilate each other with their nuclear weapons. So was there something high-tech that the two nations (Russia, in this case, the Soviet Union and the United States) could do?

And an Apollo spacecraft rendezvoused and docked with a Soviet Soyuz. And the crews lived together in space. And the crews became good friends. That says a lot.

So that’s what history teaches us that we can overcome. I would like to see that happen with China. But the Chinese government has been very secretive about its space program, the so-called civil space program.