It's been over 50 years since the United
States sent the first humans to the moon, in what was a highly competitive
space race between the U.S. and the former USSR. We choose to go to the moon in this
decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they
are hard. Now there's a renewed interest to return
to the moon with many more global players involved. Russia launched its first moon landing
spacecraft in nearly 50 years. India has become the first country to
reach the south pole of the moon, and the fourth country to ever land on the
moon. China sent its youngest ever crew to its
orbiting space station today, as the country reiterated plans to put
astronauts on the moon by the end of the decade. This morning, history is being made. The first U.S. Lunar lander in more than 50 years is
on its way to the moon's surface. Japan has made history as the fifth
nation to successfully land on the moon. There's renewed interest in the moon. We're going back to learn to live in a
deep space environment for long periods of time, so that we can go to Mars and
return safely. The moon is a proving ground. We need to get to the moon. Humanity needs to get to the moon in
order to learn how to live in space. In order to learn how to utilize the
resources of space. And that is really the stepping stone
to all of the vast riches in the universe. And who gets to the moon this time
around could have implications on Earth as well as the cosmos. Whoever gets to establish a significant
lunar presence is making a statement about their political system, about
their economic system, about who is ahead in the geopolitical competition. But a second, newer part to this is the
belief that there are significant resources on the moon that are useful
to Earth or are useful for future spaceflight. The United States was the first country
to put man on the moon in 1969, and to this day is still the only nation to
have landed people on the moon. In 1959, the Soviet Union beat the U.S. To become the first nation to reach the
surface of the moon with its Luna 2 spacecraft. This all happened during
the peak of the Cold War. That's one small step for man, one giant
leap for mankind. Spacecraft sent to the moon are
typically categorized into several mission types. A flyby mission passes
close to the moon, but does not go into orbit around the moon. Think of it as
an initial reconnaissance mission. An orbiter mission allows the
spacecraft to go around the moon continually taking detailed photos or
radar images of it. A hard- landing mission is where a
probe crashes into the moon. Those can be intentional, with the
impact kicking up debris that can then be analyzed, often by the instruments
of an orbiter spacecraft, or unintentional when an attempted soft
landing goes awry. Soft landings are typically the most
challenging and costly missions, as the spacecraft must make it to the surface
of the moon with its structure and instruments fully intact. Since the late 1960s, there's been over
20 successful soft landings on the moon. Six of those were NASA's manned Apollo
missions, and globally, more than 100 lunar missions are expected to take
place by 2030. A major reason for this renewed
interest in going back to the moon was finding concrete evidence of a valuable
natural resource, water. For years following the Apollo
missions, scientists had seen clues of water on the moon. But it wasn't until
India's Chandrayaan-1 mission, which sent an orbiter and impactor to the
moon in 2008, that researchers became confident that the moon was not as dry
as they originally thought. When we thought that the moon was really
just sort of barren and had nothing, the concept of sending somebody to the moon
and trying to keep that person alive was just colossally expensive, and there
didn't seem to be a benefit. But now we have water so we can send
people to the moon, and we can support them on the moon without having to send
water up. The altitude is being brought down from
800m, and we are nearing and approaching the lunar surface. In August of 2023, India made another
breakthrough, becoming the first nation to successfully soft land on the moon's
south pole, an area that scientists think is the most likely to contain
large reserves of water. Earlier that month, a Russian probe en
route to soft land in the same area crashed into the moon after it spun
into an uncontrolled orbit. We're pretty sure there is water on the
moon. We're pretty sure that most of it is in
these very, very deep craters on the lunar south pole because no sunlight
ever gets to them. Aside from being crucial for human
survival, water can be used to make rocket fuel by splitting its
components, oxygen and hydrogen, and liquefying them. When these two
elements are brought back together, the chemical reaction results in a burst of
energy that can be used to propel a rocket. NASA is using this fuel type in
its new SLS rocket that will launch astronauts back to the moon. With access to water, the moon could
one day become a refueling station for rockets and a springboard for deeper
space exploration. Private companies and countries are also
eager to mine the moon for rare-earth metals. And then there's the isotope
helium-3, which, while rare on Earth, is abundant on the moon and can
theoretically be used to power nuclear fusion reactors. We haven't figured out quite how to do
it yet. There's a lot of theories about it, but
once we figure that out, the helium-3 on the moon could seriously power the
Earth. The entire Earth for centuries. The presence of water on the moon and
access to its other resources have motivated a number of nations and
commercial companies to explore it. In the last few years, Japan, South
Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, and India have all sent spacecraft to
the moon with varying degrees of success. Most recently, Japan became
just the fifth nation to soft land a spacecraft on the moon. On the heels of
its own successful unmanned moon landing, India has also said that it
plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2040. Russia two has expressed a desire
to put astronauts, known as cosmonauts, in Russian, on the moon between 2031
and 2040, according to state-owned media. But the biggest competition is
between the United States and China, and who can set up a presence on the moon
first. Once you have a human presence, you
start establishing rules. That's just human nature. And really the question then becomes,
what will be the lingua franca? What will be the common language of
lunar exploration? Will be English, or will it be Chinese? The U.S. Effort to return to the moon is
known as Artemis. The program is spearheaded by NASA in
conjunction with a number of commercial and international partners, and is
expected to cost the country over $93 billion through 2025. Artemis is all about getting people back
to the moon for long duration, so eventually we want to get people on the
surface of the moon for up to 30 days. And it's first about science. We want to understand the south pole of
the moon, which is where we're flying to. And we also want to test our
systems close to home in a partial gravity environment before we send
crews on to Mars. As has become the norm, NASA is working
with a number of commercial partners to build out its Artemis infrastructure. Some of these companies include
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman, Blue
Origin, SpaceX, Axiom Space, and Collins Aerospace. NASA's first mission,
Artemis I, took place in 2022 and tested NASA's Space Launch System rocket and
Orion spacecraft, which will eventually carry astronauts to lunar orbit. More recently, NASA, in partnership
with commercial company Astrobotic, launched the country's first lunar
lander in decades, though it suffered a technical anomaly shortly after launch. The Artemis II mission, which was
originally scheduled for November 2024 but has since been pushed back to
September 2025, will launch four astronauts into orbit around the moon
before Artemis III returns astronauts to the moon's surface in September 2026. Flying back to the moon is very hard,
and getting to the south pole is even harder. Creating deep space systems to
function for 21 days in orbit, 30 days on the surface, it takes time to prove
that out. As part of its Artemis objectives, NASA
is working to build a space station that will orbit the moon, as well as
establish a base camp on the moon's surface. We've talked about setting up something
called the Lunar Gateway Station, so that would be a space station that
would in fact, be manned all the time, that would orbit the moon. And every so
often you would then see a crew go from the Lunar Gateway station to the lunar
surface, where they presumably would have shelters and habitats and things
like that. Meanwhile, China is a relative newcomer
to the space race, with the country not having conducted a manned spaceflight
until 2003. But China has since made tremendous
progress. The country built its own earth
orbiting station after Congress banned all scientific collaboration between
NASA and China in 2011, meaning China lost access to the International Space
Station. Along with a number of partners
including Russia, Venezuela and Pakistan, China has also announced
plans to build its own research station on the lunar surface, and has said it
wants to put astronauts on the moon by around 2030. United States' aerospace leadership has
expressed concerns about China's moon ambitions, especially if the country
were to establish a presence on the moon before the U.S. I think the space race is really between
us and China, and we need to protect the interests of the international
community. You see the actions of the Chinese
government on earth. They go out and claim some
international islands in the South China Sea, and then they claim them as
theirs. So naturally, I don't want China to get
to the South Pole first with humans and then say, this is ours, stay out. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is often
seen as the cornerstone of international space law. Over 100 countries,
including the U.S., Russia and China, are party to the legally binding
treaty, which details the rules governing the peaceful exploration and
use of space. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 said,
nobody can own a planet. Nobody can own a natural satellite, the
moon, any of the moons of Jupiter or something like that. It said that you
cannot deploy weapons of mass destruction. But parts of the Outer Space Treaty can
be vague and left up to interpretation. President Obama in 2015 signed a law
that said, we interpret article two, which is that article that says you
can't claim territory in space to mean that you can extract resources and
that's not claiming territory. So once you take the resources off that
other celestial body, they are yours. They are your property at that point. Article nine of the Outer Space Treaty,
which says that nations should conduct activities, quote, with due regard to
the interests of other nations, has also been ambiguous. We don't know exactly what due regard
means. The United States has said, well, we
think due regard means that you have to respect an exclusionary zone or a
coordination zone around any operations or any objects that we have in space. It's not difficult to imagine such an
exclusionary zone being set up by a country around a place rich in natural
resources, for example. If you get to some of the most
water-rich areas first, you could, because there is no formal legal system
here, try to lay claim to that. If that first mover also is the first
mover with respect to fusion, that first mover is going to control not just the
moon, but the earth as well, because they will have the access and be able
to distribute that helium-3. In addition to the Outer Space Treaty,
coalitions of different nations have come up with their own sets of rules. In 2020, the United States introduced
the Artemis Accords. This is a non-binding multilateral
arrangement between the United States government and the over 30 other world
governments participating alongside the U.S. In the Artemis program. Notably missing from these signatories,
however, are China and Russia. Russia and China objected to the Artemis
Accords for two reasons. Russia, of course this was during
Covid, just prior to the invasion of Ukraine, said, oh, this is the United
States being imperialist. We're gonna have none of it. And China
has said, we're not going to look at the Artemis Accords because they were
negotiated outside of the United Nations, which is the only place where
space law should be made. But even if everyone on earth was to
agree on a set of laws for outer space, enforcement right now would be another
issue. Think about enforcement of international
law. We we know that we don't do a good job
of that here on earth. Imagine a violation of international
law in space, and we can't even send people to the moon right now. And so enforcement is going to be very
difficult. But before any nation can establish a
presence on the moon or claim its riches, they have to overcome some
tough challenges. For China, the big challenges are this
is brand new and they are still developing some of the key technologies
associated. For example, a heavy lift booster to
lift the space capsule and crew and consumables that would be necessary not
only to go to the moon, but obviously to bring them back. The challenge to us is
very, actually very basic. The Chinese approach is one based on
longterm planning with programmatic stability. We have had repeated studies
and projects and exploratory commissions on not only going back to the moon, but
also going to Mars. But budgets change every 4 to 8 years
depending on who the president is, even more frequently if you think about who
runs Congress. One of the things that was really
phenomenal about the transition from Trump is that we did not lose Artemis. It was like the one thing that the
Biden administration kept from the Trump administration. But despite the challenges facing
individual countries, as they continued to push the boundaries of what we can
do in space, Hanlon remains optimistic. The exploration and use of space by
treaty, by the Outer Space Treaty, is supposed to be for the benefit of all
and we can make it that way. Competition isn't necessarily a bad
thing. We need to have a lot of countries
excited because this is our first step as a human race versus as a Chinese
person, an American person, a British person, a Kenyan person. Right? We need to stop thinking about
ourselves in that way. And space is the way we're going to do that.