The first astronauts due to be sent to the moon in more than 50 years have told Sky News that winning the space race with China is “very important to all of us”.
NASA is under pressure from Donald Trump’s administration and US politicians to be first back down to the lunar surface. But China is increasingly confident in its own space programme.
Jeremy Hansen, a Canadian joining three American astronauts for the Artemis mission, told me the crew were well aware of “what’s going on in the world”.
“We understand why there’s this perspective of a race,” he said at a NASA news conference.
“There are very real things happening, and you got to have heads-up play and you got to be thinking a few steps ahead. This all makes sense to us.
“Winning that race is very important to all of us.”
The mission to loop around the moon will launch as soon as February, flight testing the rocket and capsule that will play a key role in landing a crew on the lunar surface in 2027.
It will be the first time that humans have looped around the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
NASA had delayed the launch because a test flight without humans on board in 2022 resulted in significant damage to the heatshield that protects the capsule as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.
The space agency is now satisfied that engineering upgrades have fixed the problem and the Orion crew capsule is safe to fly.
Mission commander Reid Wiseman said the crew were confident in the technology.
“When I get into Orion, it’s like climbing into my bed,” he said.
“I feel warm and tucked in.”
The crew’s trajectory around the moon will take them 5,000 miles above the surface.
But they will pass over the far side of the moon, which always faces away from Earth.
Christina Koch, who could become the first female astronaut to head beyond Earth’s orbit, said it would be a special moment.
“We could see parts of the moon that never have had human eyes lay upon them before,” she said.
“Human eyes are one of the best scientific instruments that we have and our geologists are beyond excited for our eyes to look at the moon. And we’ve been training how to turn those observations into tangible science for them.”
In the 1960s, the space race was with the Soviet Union. America won, the first to plant a flag.
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But growing evidence that there could be substantial quantities of frozen water on the moon has started a new space race, this time between the US and China.
Water would provide hydration for astronauts exploring and potentially mining minerals from a permanent moon base.
Splitting the water molecule, H2O, into hydrogen and oxygen would also provide air to breathe and the ingredients for rocket fuel.
The return of Mr Trump to the White House and an accelerated Chinese space programme has made the space race 2.0 more intense.
China has already beaten the US to land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. And it plans to land taikonauts on the surface by 2030.
There is an Outer Space Treaty which means no country can make a territorial claim to a celestial body.
But Bleddyn Bowen, professor of astropolitics at Durham University, said it matters which nation reaches the surface first because they’ll be able to influence ground rules.
“If China is to sustain a significant presence on the moon in the century to come, I would expect the United States and India, and perhaps Europe as well, to do something similar,” he said.
“They’ll say: ‘Hey, don’t forget about us, we’re here as well. And if you want to develop rules and best practices in space, you can’t do it without us.'”
