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"The first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts, launched by American rockets, from American soil."
Last month in Huntsville, Alabama, Vice President Pence, who laid a new American flag on the moon, met with leaders of the American space community. He came to deliver a dramatic message: the administration was not satisfied with NASA's 2028 project. This is not fast enough, says Pence. He ordered NASA to arrive there five years ago – before, he does not need to add, the end of what could be a second term for President Trump.
The Trump administration repeatedly tries to project President America Great Again's rhetoric into space. Trump pledged to strengthen the country's missile defense system with a space layer that "will ultimately be a very big part of our defense and, of course, our attack." He also pushed for the creation of a Space. Force, a sixth branch of the US military.
This is a major change. Space policy has always served national interests, but the United States has increasingly entered into partnerships for exploration and science. The shining example is the International Space Station, a joint venture that has survived the geopolitical conflict between member countries.
The famous first direct image of a black hole, unveiled this month, is the result of an international collaboration involving telescopes on four continents. The image was created by transforming the entire globe into a single giant radio antenna. In 2015, physicists from universities and research institutes from more than a dozen countries pooled their energies to detect gravitational waves for the first time.
And NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, includes instruments provided by Canada and Europe, and will launch Ariane from a spaceport in French Guiana.
The Chinese lunar lander is seen on a photo taken by the Yutu-2 rover on January 11th. (China National Space Administration / Xinhua News Agency / AP)
For years, US space policy has been relatively unaffected by Washington's most intense partisan battles. Democrats and Republicans supported each other in their favorite projects: a new big telescope over here, a new rocket over it.
But NASA remains an executive agency, responding to the dictates of the White House and powerful members of Congress. After the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, President George W. Bush's administration decided that NASA should withdraw the shuttle fleet and invest in new equipment to send astronauts to the moon by 2020. .
President Barack Obama was cool at the moon's plan, saying been there, do that. And a presidential committee appointed by Obama concluded that the agency did not have enough money to make Moon's plan plausible. Obama ordered the agency to send astronauts to an asteroid and then to Mars.
The election of Trump led to another pivot. Trump has taken office in the hope of doing something dramatic in the space. He expressed his disappointment that NASA could not send human beings to Mars during his first term. Pence took over the reins of the National Space Council, a White House unit that has been moribund for a generation and now brings together civilian and military space operations. The administration asked NASA to reverse the course and tinker with a lunar program, ASAP.
It is still unclear to what extent the new MAGA rhetoric in space will result in a reality. Without additional Congressional funding or a change in the laws of physics, NASA is unlikely to put shoes on the moon in Pence's five years. But Pence's speech certainly boosted the aerospace community and ransacked NASA, in part by signaling that the administration would consider a lunar plan using a commercial spacecraft and not just hardware directly developed and owned by NASA.
It is also unclear whether the Space Force will materialize as a separate military service. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are unsure whether it is necessary. There is already a space command in the air force. To be clear: this would not imply a kind of military deployment of uniformed personnel in space, as in the movie "Starship Troopers".
The United States, like any other state-of-the-art country, is increasingly dependent on space for its military and economic power and must be prepared to protect its satellite fleet. India blew up a satellite a few weeks ago as part of a demonstration of its technological capabilities. China did the same thing in 2007 during a test that alarmed the Pentagon and national security agencies and created a cloud of space debris.
Pence called the space "new battleground". This language has been adopted by the highest officials of the Pentagon.
"After carefully observing our dependencies on space, China and Russia have developed new technologies, strategies, tactics and asymmetric capabilities specifically designed to negate our freedom of operation in the past." 39; space. While we would prefer space to remain free of all conflict, they have made space a combat area, "said Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and General Joseph F earlier. Dunford Jr., president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, this month.
In his March 26 talk in Huntsville, Pence spoke of China's recent success in installing the first robotic probe on the far side of the moon. This mission "has revealed their ambition to seize the strategic heights of the Moon and become the first invading nation in the world of space".
China has scheduled a sample return mission later this year and India hopes to install a lander and rover near the lunar south pole. Israel recently tried to put a probe that crashed. And Japan and Russia are both working on missions involving lunar landers.
The European Space Agency has for many years been a reliable partner of NASA in major space missions, but after Pence's speech, Europeans had to re-evaluate their relations.
"We are in contact with NASA to discuss how Europe could play a role and we are part of the game," said Jan Woerner, director general of the European Space Agency, at the Washington Post . He noted that Europeans are still providing a service module for NASA's Orion spacecraft, which could play a role in a lunar mission. And he added that he was asking his colleagues to accelerate the development of elements that could be used for an ascent module allowing astronauts to leave the moon during a lunar landing mission.
He said that he hoped that cooperation, rather than competition, would guide space policy in the future.
"There is no fence in the space; therefore, we can work together, especially across land borders, "Woerner said. "But of course, there is also a political will behind space, and that's what Vice President Pence said. It's different from what is done in Europe, but we are different people. "
Scott Pace, a White House official who serves as executive secretary of the National Council of Space, said the reason NASA could use exclusively American equipment for a lunar mission was pragmatic. International partners simply will not have time to develop the crucial elements of a lunar landing in 2024, he said. The United States already has a rocket and capsule owned by NASA – both much behind schedule, budget and controversy – and could potentially appeal to the commercial space industry in full swing to acquire important elements of lunar mission architecture.
Pace said his international partners had not adhered to NASA's earlier aspirations for Mars and had begun to go astray. The moon is a more plausible target in the short term, said Pace, and partners will participate in longer-term lunar exploration.
"The space in general is an environment in which it is useful to have partners," said Laura Grego, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "It's expensive, it can be dangerous and, of course, it's the province of all human beings."
Read more:
Trump channels Reagan's plan for "Star Wars" missile defense
See the first direct image of a black hole
NASA rocket becomes Boeing's last headache, while Trump asks for mission on the moon
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