“As the U.S. has flailed, China and its partners have marched forward, notching one success after another. There is no reason to believe they will not be first to send a crewed mission to the lunar south pole, where only a half dozen or so promising regions exist to safely land. Depending on how the currently vague noninterference rules are interpreted and enforced by the Chinese (and others), significant parts of the moon might end up off-limits for anyone else to explore or mine. We do not know for certain how China might behave on the lunar surface—this is part of the conundrum—but terrestrial conflicts in the South China Sea and China’s regular infractions of sovereign airspace give scant rationale for optimism.”
-Quote from an article in Scientific American titled “NASA Needs a ‘Lunar Marathon’ to Match China on the Moon.” The author of the piece is Thomas Zurbuchen, who previously worked at NASA and is now is professor and director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s ETH Zürich | Space. For another take on where the US is with its Artemis lunar program, you can read an ARS Technica article titled “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Saving NASA’s Floundering Artemis Program.”
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