NASA’s Artemis program has drawn attention for its plan to send astronauts around the moon. But behind that mission is a broader strategic push: a new race between the United States and China to return humans to the lunar surface.
This time, the race is about more than flags and footprints. The country that gets there first could gain an advantage in choosing where to build future lunar infrastructure, setting technical standards and shaping the next phase of space exploration.
At NASA’s Ignition event last week, officials framed that urgency in explicit terms. NASA is trying to return Americans to the moon before China — and before the end of U.S. President Donald Trump’s term.
Jared Isaacman, the billionaire nominated by Trump to lead NASA, put it this way: “NASA has stated we will return Americans to the moon before the end of President Trump’s term. Our great competitor said before 2030.”
“The difference between success and failure will be measured in months, not years.”
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So the race is on, at least politically. NASA is working on an accelerated plan to land Americans on the moon by early 2028, while Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar program, has said: “By 2030, the Chinese people will definitely be able to set foot on the moon. That’s not a problem.”
Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society, does not believe the 2028 target is realistic. But he says China has become a useful foil for NASA and its supporters.
“China has been building up its lunar spaceflight ambitions,” he said. “They’ve had a goal for a number of years now to land their astronauts on the surface of the moon, to build out a lunar base.… It is a helpful way to galvanize political support.”
A marathon, not a sprint
This is not the first time the U.S. has pledged to return to the moon. In 2019, then-vice president Mike Pence said American astronauts would be back on the lunar surface by 2024. But political priorities shifted, and that deadline came and went.
That is where some analysts see China holding an advantage.
Dean Cheng, a senior fellow with the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and a longtime expert on China’s space program, says this new race is not a sprint like Apollo, but a marathon. This time, the goal is not just to visit the moon, but to stay.
“One of the striking things about the Chinese space program has been that they don’t make too many predictions,” Cheng said. “But the ones that they do, they absolutely fulfill.”
That is why, he says, China’s 2030 target carries weight.
Not everyone sees the current moment as a true race. Kevin Olsen, a Canadian research fellow at the UK Space Agency in Oxford’s Department of Physics, argues the Americans will always have been first to the moon, and that both sides are ultimately heading there anyway.
He also notes Artemis is not solely an American effort. NASA is working with the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and JAXA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Olsen says Artemis is less of a nationalist enterprise than Apollo was.
“It’s something bigger than that,” he said. “It’s a stepping stone to go further from the moon. We’re not just there to claim a piece of it. We’re not just there to get resources. We’re there to explore for the benefit of all mankind.”
Still, the timing matters. Dreier says the 2028 goal is driven in part by politics.
“It is the last year of President Trump’s second term, and there is a strong desire by the White House to have this occur under President Trump,” he said.
Why the moon’s south pole matters
The urgency is not only political. It is also geographic.
Both China and the U.S. have spoken about establishing lunar bases near the moon’s south pole. Scientists and planners see that region as especially valuable because some deep craters there are permanently shadowed and may contain water ice.
Dreier says that matters because water could be used for drinking, breathable oxygen and rocket fuel.
“Which just means it’s cold enough that you can trap water and ice over billions of years,” he said. “You take water, you separate the two molecules, you can make rocket fuel. We can breathe oxygen, you can drink it.”
That means the country that lands first may get first choice of the most useful sites.
Listening to Isaacman at the Ignition event, the sense of urgency was unmistakable.
“We are not going to celebrate our adherence to excess requirements, policy or bureaucratic process,” he said. Instead, he emphasized the need to increase the cadence of lunar missions.
That cadence could matter over the long term, Cheng says.
“Imagine [China] setting up a lunar outpost and rotating a crew every six months,” he said.
If the U.S. is going to the moon only once a year, or less, Cheng argues that could have consequences beyond prestige.
“What do you think the literal language of space travel will be?” he said. “If there are constant Chinese missions and rare American missions, what makes you think the language of space travel will be English? And it’s not just the literal language like we’re talking. It’s data formats.”
In that scenario, he says, the country that builds the first sustained base could help set the rules and technical standards for whatever comes next.
As Jeff Bezos becomes the latest billionaire to embark on a short space flight, an astrophysics professor and science reporter discuss the benefits, issues and environmental costs surrounding the latest space race.
A billionaire space race
A major challenge for NASA is funding.
Dreier says that, adjusted for inflation, NASA was spending about $43 billion US a year at the height of Apollo. By comparison, NASA’s entire budget in 2025 was about $25 billion US.
To close that gap, NASA is relying heavily on private industry, especially for the spacecraft meant to carry astronauts from lunar orbit to the moon’s surface.
That has created a parallel contest between two billionaire-led companies.
SpaceX, which was originally contracted to build the lunar lander, fell behind schedule. NASA then expanded the competition. Now Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are both working to get their vehicles ready.
SpaceX is developing Starship, while Blue Origin is building the Blue Moon Mark 2 lander. NASA has said it will fly with whichever provider is ready first.
Dreier says that leaves NASA dependent on companies it does not fully control.
“If Jeff Bezos wanted to tomorrow, he could shut down Blue Origin and walk away from this entire thing,” he said. “Not saying he will or that’s even likely, but it is a lot of power to imbue in a handful of individuals … to achieve what is nominally a national goal.”
That dynamic is part of what makes this new space race so different from the last one: a U.S.-led effort involving international partners and private companies, alongside a Chinese program driven by long-term state planning.
Cheng says Beijing sees the moon as more than a destination.
“When they land, especially if they beat the Americans, the message is going to be not only we can do this, the Americans have lost their skill,” he said.
For both countries, the moon is only part of the story. Any future lunar base is widely seen as a stepping stone for deeper space exploration — to Mars and beyond.
