Dark side landing casts light on change in culture
The Soviet Union’s launch of the Sputnik satellite 60 years ago shook the United States to its core, touching off fears that one of the country’s biggest adversaries had gotten the upper hand technologically and militarily.
The cosmic achievement provoked an international space race that left U.S. footprints — and the nation’s flag — on the moon almost 12 years later.
But when China on Wednesday became the first nation to land a probe on the mysterious far side of the moon, the news was met with congratulatory messages and calls for further collaboration between the two countries.
“This is a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment!” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted shortly after the landing was confirmed late Wednesday.
The cultural shift in the U.S. response to competition in space dovetails with the changing global approach to interstellar exploration seen over the past half century: instead of battling for the top
spot, nations work together to reach the stars, experts told the Houston Chronicle.
The examples of international collaboration in the stars are seemingly infinite. Russia — once the U.S.’s mortal enemy in the quest for the cosmos — is now a partner in the International Space Station, a scientific collaboration among nearly 20 countries. NASA is working directly with the Israel Space Agency on a probe slated to launch to the moon in February.
And even President Donald Trump’s plans to return to the moon as a stepping stone to Mars involves heavy cooperation with both international and commercial partners.
So it’s unlikely that China’s historic achievement on the moon will cause another desperate rush to the surface on the part of NASA, said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news.
“Of course there’s the question of, ‘Is there a space race?’ ” Cowing said. “It’s more halfway between a race and a ho-hum. It’s healthy competition, somewhere in the middle.”
Race to the moon
Sputnik — the first man-made object in Earth’s orbit — shattered the American public’s sense of superiority after World War II.
“Caught off guard, the American public felt echoes of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor less than 16 years before,” NASA wrote on its website on the 60th anniversary of the Sputnik launch in 2017. “Americans feared that the Soviets — whom they believed were behind the U.S. technologically after the devastation of World War II — could launch ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons at the United States.”
Thus began the more than decadelong space race — a battle America brought to an end in July 1969 when U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon.
By 1972, 12 American men had walked on the lunar surface. And although NASA astronauts haven’t returned to the moon since Apollo 17, the U.S. remains the only country to leave footprints there.
Across the globe, even just landing a probe on the surface has been a monumental feat. Only two other countries have managed such a technological achievement — the Soviet Union in September 1959, and China this year and in 2013.
“It’s the gold standard of technological accomplishments, to be a nation to send someone or something to the moon,” Cowing said. “I think there’s been a general renaissance in thinking … that space is something you should no longer be afraid of trying to do.”
That change has partly occurred because it’s easier and cheaper to do, Cowing said. As the U.S. plans return missions to the lunar surface, Israel is set to launch a probe to the moon next month and India is gearing up to launch a lunar probe soon.
But unlike the early days of the space race, when exploration was every country for itself, today’s space exploration depends on multinational involvement.
New partners
The shift toward international collaboration is arguably most evident in the International Space Station, an orbiting laboratory in the stars that NASA began constructing in 1998.
Now the size of a five-bedroom house and often home to six astronauts at a time, the space station is where astronauts from Russia, the U.S., Canada and many other places come together to research ways to improve life on Earth.
“I often refer to the International Space Station as a zero gravity United Nations and when I say that, I like to follow it up with the fact that it works a heck of a lot better than the one in New York City,” said Milt Heflin, who worked in mission control during the Apollo era and retired from NASA in 2013. “It’s better to work on things together than it is not to.”
The United States’ biggest partner in the endeavor is Russia, once its biggest competitor in space.
The Trump administration’s plans to return to the moon as a stepping stone for Mars are steeped in international partnerships as well. Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget calls for the creation of a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, which would give the U.S. “a strategic presence in the lunar vicinity that will drive our activity with commercial and international partners and help us further explore the moon and its resources and translate that experience toward human missions to Mars.”
NASA also has partnered on the Israeli probe. Both countries have signed an agreement stating they will “cooperatively utilize” the probe that was built by Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL to study the moon’s magnetic fields.
Even China, in launching its probe to the far side of the moon, collaborated with other countries, such as Germany, on science experiments to conduct on the lunar surface.
But you won’t see the U.S. and China working together any time soon. In 2011, longtime Chinese government critic U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., spearheaded a move prohibiting NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy from collaborating with China on any scientific activities.
The Wolf amendment, as it was later named, has held for seven years — even though Wolf retired in 2015.
China’s historic achievement Wednesday prompted several individuals to voice their support for more collaboration with China, despite the current law barring it.
Retired NASA astronaut Clayton Anderson, for example, said it only makes sense to work with the Chinese, whose space program is young but impressive. He compared it to partnering with Russia on the space station, which has been a good move for both countries.
“It seems to me that the relationship with Russia on the ISS … was successful and a smart move, and I think the current administration should consider a partnership with China and their space program,” Anderson said. “In partnering with them in the space, the odds of us fighting them either in space or on the ground are probably lessened.”
‘Hi guys, we’re back’
For some time, China has been building up to what many expect is a human trip to the moon, perhaps to build a base there. The country put a man into space for the first time in 2003 and landed its first robotic probe on the moon in 2013.
China plans to have a fully operational space station in Earth’s orbit by 2022 and send a probe to Mars.
The next lunar trip will be a sample return mission, which the country hopes to launch later this year, according to Space Policy Online.
In 2016, an official for China said the country hopes to put a man on the moon by 2036, according to the Telegraph.
Cowing said he will not be surprised to see a Chinese flag on the moon in coming years.
“When they will do it, I’m not sure. Their resources are more constrained than ours but they are nothing if not relentless,” Cowing said. “I think there’s an excellent chance that if our goals start shifting toward the early 2030s, if we go back we’ll be waving at China saying, ‘Hi guys, we’re back.’”
If that happens, he said it would make sense to partner with the Chinese on the lunar surface.
“If you build a beach house next to someone else’s beach house, you’re both going to get worried when there’s a storm and you’re going to try to avoid the problems,” he said. “That’s the underlying theme in space, too.”
Looking ahead
Just as NASA has worked to increase international partnerships in space, it has done the same with commercial companies.
Through an effort funded in 2014, SpaceX and Boeing will become the first commercial companies to send crews to the International Space Station, eliminating the nation’s dependence on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the orbiting laboratory. And Trump has called for NASA to transition activity on the space station to commercial companies, ending federal funding after 2024 — though even NASA administrator Bridenstine has said the deadline probably isn’t feasible.
NASA also is relying on commercial companies to build its lunar landers, which they hope will launch as early as this year but no later than Dec. 31, 2021. The space agency in November tapped nine companies, including Houstonbased Intuitive Machines, to build these moon landers.
The commercial landers are meant to replace a rover that NASA abruptly canceled in April after sinking more than four years and $100 million into it. The rover, known as Resource Prospector, was being built by the space agency to find water on the moon.
Even though other countries’ lunar landers will reach the moon first, experts say NASA really won’t be “behind” other countries in moon exploration because we’ve already been there.
Plus, NASA has several lunar probes that people often forget about, such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that has orbited the moon since 2009.
Herb Baker, a former manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center who worked at NASA for four decades, said China’s achievement will not stir the calls to action provoked by Sputnik.
“I don’t feel like there’s really a concern that I’ve noticed or felt that feels like [China] is competing with us,” Baker said. “It’s pretty impressive what they did.”