NASA is not immune to DOGE’s threats of sweeping layoffs. According to the space agency, approximately 5% of the roughly 18,000 NASA employees accepted the resignation offer of President Donald Trump’s Deferred Resignation Program.
[Note: SpaceX owner Elon Musk has been at the forefront of DOGE activities, so his relationship with NASA has raised concerns of “vast conflicts-of-interest” from members in Congress who point out that SpaceX is NASA’s second-largest contractor with more than $2 billion in agency contracts. Also of note: SpaceX executive Michael Altenhofen recently joined NASA as a “senior advisor to the NASA Administrator.”]
While American politicians argue about cutting back the federal workforce and budget, the People’s Republic of China announced that for the first time in the country’s history that it will allow foreigners to participate in short-term missions on China’s Tiangong space station.
According to Reuters (via Xinhua, the official state news agency of the People’s Republic of China), China signed an agreement to select and train astronauts from Pakistan over the next few years.
In May, Pakistan was among the partnering countries which placed payloads on the uncrewed Chinese spacecraft Chang’e-6 that successfully retrieved samples (soil and rocks) from the moon’s far side. It was a two-month mission.
The U.S. also sent a (commercial) uncrewed lunar lander to the moon (in February 2024) where it spent a week “transmitting data and photos” but did not collect soil and rocks.
Image Thread: The IM-1 Mission successfully landed the first spacecraft on the Moon's south pole region, marking the United States' first return since Apollo 17 and the first commercial lunar lander to transmit valuable science data of each NASA payload from the lunar surface. In… pic.twitter.com/kZnhOxTtXS
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 28, 2024
Note: NASA, which helped finance the mission — the robotic lander was built and operated by Houston space company Intuitive Machines — said the data collected will help as the space agency prepares to send astronauts back to the moon under its Artemis moon mission program. (The lander, called Odysseus, was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center.)
Both the U.S. and China are looking to set up a base on the far side of the moon, where “water ice” has been found which scientists believe could sustain human life on the moon. It could also provide fuel for rockets meaning future missions to Mars potentially could be launched from the moon instead of Earth.
As seen in the video below, The Wall Street Journal‘s Clarence Leong explains how the Chang’e-6 mission moved China ahead in the space race with the U.S.
According to the WSJ, China plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030 and build a research station there with Russia by 2035. Despite NASA’s plans to also launch a crewed mission to the moon, it is concerned that China will “get there first” and claim the lunar land, even though there is an international law against such “lunar land grabs.”
