\nThe United States needs to get back to the moon before China gets there.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
For a couple of decades after the Apollo moon landings, not many people paid much attention to the moon. The moon was a \u201cbeen there, done that\u201d place, a lifeless, airless world of rocks and dust and not much else. Scientists and NASA looked to explore Mars and other planets.<\/p>\n
The discovery of frozen water in the craters rekindled interest in the moon.<\/p>\n
Moon water could simplify astronaut missions going there. Humans need to drink water to survive, and water molecules can be split into hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen provides air to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen can also be used as rocket propellants to return home to Earth, or to travel elsewhere in the solar system.<\/p>\n
Layers of ice in the craters could also provide a history of the solar system, much as ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica provide a record of Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n
Spacecraft like Athena, the Intuitive Machines mission whose fate was uncertain after a moon landing attempt on Thursday, aim to advance those goals.<\/p>\n
The rapid rise of China\u2019s space program has also set the stage for a new space race. At the Commercial Space Conference in Washington in February, Bruce Babin, a Texas congressman who is chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, raised the specter of \u201cNo trespassing\u201d signs on the moon written in Chinese.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy top priority is ensuring that U.S. astronauts return to the lunar surface and that we do so before the C.C.P.,\u201d Mr. Babin said, using the initials for Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n
Whether Mr. Trump still wants to go to the moon is less certain.<\/p>\n
During his campaign, his inaugural address in January and his address to Congress this week, Mr. Trump has mentioned planting a U.S. flag on Mars. He almost never talks about the moon anymore.<\/p>\n
Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX and a key adviser to Mr. Trump, says the moon is a distraction, even though SpaceX has a multibillion-dollar NASA contract to build the landers that are to take astronauts to the moon\u2019s surface as part of the Artemis program.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Show more<\/button><\/div>\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 6, 2025, 1:28 p.m. ET President Trump with a toy astronaut during a signing ceremony for the Space Policy Directive 1 on Dec. 11, 2017.Credit…Doug Mills\/The New York Times… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":794123,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-york-times-space-cosmos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=794122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/794123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=794122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=794122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=794122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}