The U.S. Should Go Back to the Moon--But Not on Its Own

Just in time for the half-century anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing [see our special report], the White House has declared the U.S. is going back to the moon within the next five years. “The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets, from American soil,” said Vice President Mike Pence during remarks in late March at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala.

There are reasons to be skeptical. Chief among them is the potential for Congress to balk at funding what some might consider a political stunt. According to the Trump administration, however, the urgency borders on being existential: China is now poised to “seize the lunar strategic high ground and become the world’s preeminent spacefaring nation,” Pence said. But such a jingoistic stance carries risks of its own, possibly isolating the U.S. from international collaborations in otherworldly exploration.

China has already achieved a first by landing a rover on the moon’s far side this past January. And later this year it is set to conduct its first robotic lunar sample-return mission. Zhang Kejian, head of China’s national space agency, confirmed in April that these missions are precursors to human landings perhaps a decade hence. Such missions could support China’s plans for a research station near the lunar south pole to study resources such as water ice, which can be used to manufacture rocket fuel, potable water and breathable air. The fear in the White House, it seems, is that China will lay claim to the lunar pole and prevent the U.S. and others from operating there. (This action is essentially prohibited under the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967, to which both China and the U.S. are signatories.)

There are good reasons to treat China as an adversary in space, but these moon plans are not among them. China’s use of antisatellite missiles and spacecraft does pose significant threats to strategic U.S. assets (while mirroring decades of similar efforts by the U.S. and Russia). Such concerns do not require framing NASA’s planned lunar return as part of a warlike conflict with China. As the crown jewel of the U.S. civil space program, the agency is ostensibly devoted to science and exploration instead of national defense. Although it emerged from the cold war–fueled space race of the late 1950s, NASA has more recently been defined by collaboration, not competition—most notably, in its partnerships with Russia and other nations on the International Space Station, which has served for decades to defuse geopolitical tensions.

The U.S. and China are not the only spacefaring nations with ambitious plans for lunar missions—plans that rely on varying degrees of international collaboration. Europe—a key partner in NASA’s exploration efforts—is leading the push for a multinational “Moon Village” and is working with Russia on a lander. India also intends to put a lander and rover (along with a NASA-built instrument) at the lunar south pole. Japan, a regular U.S. partner in space science, is pursuing a lunar lander as well. Israel has already made one landing attempt with help from NASA’s deep-space communications network and may soon make another. In the context of a return to the moon, a similar degree of cooperation with China would be valuable—except that Congress has placed severe restrictions on NASA’s ability to collaborate with the Chinese.

Sending NASA to the moon to beat China would not be the first time the administration has sought to extend President Donald Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” mantra into outer space. Trump has previously vowed to aggressively develop space-based missile defense systems and to create a “Space Force” as a sixth branch of the U.S. military. Both proposals have been framed as part of an unfolding clash of civilizations in which the U.S. and its allies must act decisively in space to overcome China and other adversaries, such as Russia and North Korea.

In the long term, however, this stance will most likely be self-defeating because it reinforces the impression, eagerly promulgated by China and Russia, that the biggest threat to the peaceful use of outer space is really the U.S. To ensure that our nation’s values are enshrined in space governance, the White House and Congress must together reduce needless barriers to engagement with China and other competitors, ideally through reinvigorated U.S. diplomacy within the framework of existing U.N. treaties and committees. Collaboration, not conflict, is the sustainable path forward to the moon.