Artemis II | Mission moon

Explore the geopolitical implications of NASA's Artemis II mission as it competes with China's lunar ambitions for space supremacy.

An irony hides in the context of the NASA Artemis II launch on April 2. The U.S. has both openly and in internal reports cast the Artemis programme to return American astronauts to the moon as part of a race against China. But as China in Space editor Jack Congram has pointed out, China does not believe it is racing the U.S. to the moon.

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Instead, it has developed its programme to send Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) to the moon as part of a national programme, with ties to local industries and developmental goals. The Chinese Government is thus committed to funding the programme and providing political support for it, allowing it to advance at a steady pace — one that has evidently unnerved the U.S.

Under pressure, NASA, in its public messaging at least, has responded by describing its priorities and urgency in terms of being in a race with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), with the U.S. state providing vacillating support for those priorities: swinging one way because of the costs, then the other because ‘beating’ China offers the prospect of projecting American supremacy in at least one high-technology domain, after having that undermined in semiconductor and clean energy.

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The irony? As Mr. Congram put it, the liberal democracy “sees the moon as a proving ground in a geopolitical contest”, with commercial connotations tacked on, while the party state “views it as an extension of long-term science-driven development”. Perhaps this is not an irony at all given the success of China’s state-directed techno-nationalist development in the last half century, or perhaps CNSA’s apparent indifference to NASA’s efforts is rooted in secure knowledge that it is, in fact, ahead. Either way, China is giving the U.S. more than a run for its money.