Nasa has warned that China may attempt to take over parts of the Moon within just a few years.
The space agency’s administrator Bill Nelson said he fears the country’s civilian programmes launched in the name of science could actually be secret military operations.
Speaking before a House Appropriations Committee to argue why Nasa needed a $25.4 billion budget for 2025, Mr Nelson said: ‘China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive.
‘We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space programme is a military programme. And I think, in effect, we are in a race.’
During the original ‘space race’, the US and Russia battled to be the first country to put humans on the Moon. The US won when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface in 1969.
However, while it remains the only country so far to have landed astronauts on the Moon, China has pledged to achieve the feat by 2030, with plans for a permanent base.
Nasa’s Artemis programme is aiming to return US astronauts to the lunar surface potentially as soon as 2026, but has hit a number of delays.
The mission will focus on the lunar south pole, an area of interest to a number of countries due to the possibility of water ice, which could be used to establish long-term bases and to produce fuel and oxygen for missions further out into space.
Both the US and India have successfully landed unmanned spacecraft around the pole. China has also landed on the Moon, including when deploying a lunar rover as part of its Chang’e 3 mission, and returning samples from the surface as part of Chang’e 5 in 2020.
‘Their latest date that they have said that they’re going to land is 2030, but that keeps moving up,’ said Mr Nelson.
Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/19/nasa-warns-china-may-try-take-moon-20678702/