"If you come up short with who comes down the ladder first, the impact is felt around the world."
"If you come up short with who comes down the ladder first, the impact is felt around the world."
Last month, China delayed the launch of an ambitious robotic mission to the South Pole of the Moon, Chang'e 7, until early next year. The country did not provide a detailed explanation for the schedule slip, but it was welcomed by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
"They are targeting the exact same location on lunar South Pole," Isaacman said Wednesday evening at the Off World conference in Houston. "We may have dodged a bullet with the Chang'e 7 mission a couple of weeks ago because that would have gone to the Shackleton crater."
Much of the lunar surface is pretty barren, but the South Pole, and the Shackleton Crater in particular, offers some of the most coveted real estate there. That's because the high rims of the crater create permanently shadowed regions known as "cold traps," where it's thought that water (in the form of ice, of course) and other useful materials may have accumulated over billions of years.
In all of NASA's and China's plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the South Pole of the Moon matter the most. It's there that both countries believe they can establish an enduring presence that will help them learn techniques for expansion further into the Solar System. Isaacman and other US officials have started to express concerns that China could establish exclusion zones where robotic probes and then human missions go. Chang'e 7 will bring considerable mobility to the Moon.
"It has rovers, it has hopper drones like we now have in development but didn't eight months ago, and could have potentially denied access to some of the most interesting spots," Isaacman said. "They want to interact with the water ice, and they want to get really good at the skills for where they'll want to go next for their Neil Armstrong-like moment. Except it won't be on the Moon, it'll be on Mars."
No country has softly landed a spacecraft at the lunar poles, which are more difficult to reach than equatorial regions of the Moon. The delay of Chang'e 7 opens up the possibility that NASA could reach this terrain first, with the initial launch of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 vehicle. This large lander will carry two NASA probes to the South Pole, possibly as early as spring of 2027.
Isaacman's comments come amid a debate about whether it really matters if NASA gets back to the Moon with humans before China lands there. The Asian nation has set a target of landing its first astronauts on the Moon by or before 2030 and is making considerable progress in developing a crewed spacecraft, rocket, and lander to accomplish this.
Does it matter if China gets to the Moon before NASA gets back? After all, China would only be repeating what the United States did in 1969 with the Apollo mission. In Isaacman's view, it does.
"That will call into question every other country around the world," Isaacman said of China landing on the Moon next. "Like, whose security guarantee should I trust? Should I trust the United States and NATO? Should I trust China if they're the emerging technical superpower here? Whose technology should I buy? Whose military hardware should I buy? Whose standards should I adhere to? Who am I listening to on AI? Am I listening to the United States or am I listening to China on that? All of that's on the table."
This should never have been a race, Isaacman said, noting US space policy failures going back to the Reagan administration. He estimates that NASA has spent $100 billion across multiple presidential administrations, Democrat and Republican, that has led nowhere. Meanwhile, China just had its first human spaceflight in 2003 and has since expanded its capabilities to the point where it now rivals the United States in space.
"If you come up short with who comes down the ladder first, the impact is felt around the world," Isaacman said.
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