Ex-NASA Chief Warns China's Lunar 'Exploration' Aims to Dominate 21st Century...

Former NASA Administrator Bill Nelson argues in a forthcoming memoir that China's lunar exploration strategy amounts to a bid for dominance in space, and that the United States risks falling behind. Nelson, who led NASA from 2021 to 2025, points to China's plans to establish permanent infrastructure at the Moon's South Pole—where water ice and other resources concentrate—as evidence of a long-term competition rather than symbolic achievement. He frames this as the defining geopolitical contest of the coming decades, one that will unfold not on Earth but in orbit and beyond, with higher stakes than even the Cold War space race.