New space race: Trump wants to reach the Moon before China

BarcelonaThe Donald Trump administration cut NASA's budget by 24.3% for next year and completely reoriented the strategy of the US space program. The new priority is "reaching the Moon before China and putting an American on Mars," an explicit statement that officially (and very undiplomatically) confirms what was a public secret: the new space race between the United States and China. Not even President JFK ever officially stated that the goal of the Apollo missions was to defeat the Soviet Union, but Donald Trump doesn't mince his words. Nor does he have any scientific interest in space. His budget, in fact, drastically cuts space research programs and planetary research programs, such as those investigating the climate crisis. NASA sets a course for Mars, as requested. Elon Musk, who has oriented his company Space X in this direction. However, first they have to reach the Moon just to beat Xi Jinping.

"We'll see if he succeeds, because China has announced that it will take astronauts to the Moon in 2030, and if China says in 2030 it's because it will be in 2030, while there are still too many unknowns to resolve" in NASA's Artemis program, notes the specialist engineer. Beyond EarthThe unknowns that could delay the American lunar mission also have to do with Elon Musk, since his Starship rocket is key to these missions and there are many doubts that it can be ready in time.

The budget presented by Trump plans to allocate 7 billion to the lunar program and another 1 billion to "new investments focused on Mars." To achieve this, he will cut various items, starting with 2.275 billion from space scientific research programs, and will also remove 1.161 billion from planetary observation and research programs, such as those studying the climate emergency.

They will remain like this the Artemis II missions –planned for next year to take a crew to lunar orbit and back– and Artemis III, which would once again put a human being on the surface of the Moon (Trump's proposal, unlike the previous one, does not specify whether it will be male or female and, obviously, in line with its opposition to diversity policies, does not foresee this being included). After these two missions, the lunar program will be completely abandoned to focus on going to Mars. Hence, the enormous SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, built by NASA for the Artemis missions, will be dismantled once the Moon has been reached.

It also plans to save $879 million by dismantling the SLS, Orion, and Gateway. "The SLS rocket should have been canceled years ago because it was a dinosaur; it was too expensive (about $4 billion each rocket), and it uses reusable parts for a rocket that is disposable," Clemente explains, "but now it no longer makes sense to cancel it because there is no alternative."

ESA "is not panicking yet"

The construction of the Gateway, which was intended to be a space station in lunar orbit to continue lunar exploration, has also been canceled. And this leaves partners like the European Space Agency (ESA), which has already built several modules for this station, in the lurch. NASA proposes relocating these modules to other missions, but that has not reassured ESA executives, who have already announced that they will conduct an "evaluation with all member states of possible actions and alternative scenarios for ESA programs affected" by Trump's drastic cuts to NASA.

"The message these days are that it is not yet time to panic," José Antonio Rodríguez Manfredi, researcher at INTA-CSIC and head of several instruments involved in NASA missions, explains to ARA. The European agency, he says, still hopes that Congress will halt some of these cuts, since Trump's budget proposal must receive approval from Capitol Hill. It also needs a green light from Congress. Appointment of the new NASA administrator, billionaire Jared Isaacman. But the submission shown so far by the congressmen and senators of the Republican majority does not bode well.

"This budget is destroying NASA," says Rodríguez Manfredi, and recalls that in these first weeks of Trump's term there have already been "many layoffs" at the US agency, within the personnel cuts directed by Elon Musk and especially with regard to diversity policies. "Missions like Perseverance (the rover (which is exploring Mars) have had to reduce staff," he explains. Now, NASA's new budget also eliminates the mission planned to go to Mars in search of the samples that Perseverance has been collecting over the past two years, a mission in which the ESA was also participating and for which it was also producing components. But the Perseverance sample tubes shouldn't be abandoned in the red earth of Mars: the White House plans for a private-sector company to take on that mission.

All of this leads some experts to wonder whether the ESA could offer China the material it developed for NASA, which Washington now doesn't want. "On paper, this alternative exists, and in recent weeks there has been a rapprochement between Europe and China in several areas, but I don't think it will be done because strategically it's too risky; the US reaction could be disproportionate," says Rodríguez Manfredi.