Bill Nelson, agency chief Bill Nelson, said Chinese astronauts are busy learning how to destroy other nations satellites.
Bill Nelson, NASA s administrator, told the newspaper Bild that China might be considering a takeover of the Moon as part of its military space program.
In an interview published on Saturday, Nelson claimed that the United States is now involved in a new race to space, with China this time. He said that Beijing might finish the construction of its own moon station in 2035 and start experiments a year later.
79-year-old Nelson claimed that we must be very concerned about China landing on the Moon and that it now belongs to the Peoples Republic and everyone else should stay out, as stated by the 79-year-old Nelson.
Nelson said that China s space program is a military space program, and that the competition for the south pole of the moon is particularly intense: potential water deposits there could be used in the future for rocket fuel production.
When asked by Bild what military purposes could China be pursuing in space, Nelson claimed that Chinese astronauts are busy learning how to destroy satellites from other countries.
Nelson has been a hard critic of China's policy in space, despite Beijing s assurances that its ambitious space program has purely peaceful purposes.
In April he accused Chinese officials of refusing to work with the US on its operations and concealing important data. He acknowledged that NASA abides by a law from 2011 that prohibits the agency from engaging in direct collaboration with the Chinese government or any China-affiliated organizations without approval from Congress and federal law enforcement authorities. Chinese officials have pointed out the ban, called the Wolf Amendment, as an impediment to direct cooperation with NASA.
Russia is trying to cooperate with China in space due to recent sanctions imposed by the West on Moscow over its military offensive in Ukraine. In the end of February, just two days after the launch of Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine, the head of Russian space agency Dmitry Rogozin announced that Roscosmos would cease work on joint space projects with Europe and the United States and would start negotiations with China on coordination and mutual technical support for all deep-space missions.
In January this year, NASA's Office of Inspector General warned that the size of the agency's astronaut corps might be too small to meet its future needs. One of the smallest corpses of astronauts in the past 20 years has been named by the corps, which listed 44 astronauts, while NASA is preparing for its Artemis moon exploration missions.