Without any prior warning, NASA locked Chinese nationals out of its buildings and networks on September 5, further ratcheting up tensions between the U.S. and China around their space ambitions. While Chinese were already barred from being employed full-time at the agency, they could work as contractors or as part of a university program. No more.
The stated reason for the sudden change was “to ensure the security of our work,” according to a statement made by NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens to Bloomberg. China is rapidly advancing its capabilities in space, with ambitions to contest the dominance of the U.S. there. It is true that China has a habit of stealing America’s expertise to make its own stuff, especially in the aerospace sector.
But why did the agency decide to pull the rug out from under citizens of that country now, and with no heads up? NASA didn’t provide a reason for the timing, but it’s notable that just two days earlier, on September 3, there was a hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee in which former NASA executives declared that China was beating us in the race back to the Moon, per Space.com. It’s not a stretch to assume that a fire got lit under acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy to do something about it. Sure enough, he’s now promising that NASA is fully focused on the Moon, and that we’re absolutely, definitely going to beat China to it.
Winning the Moon race against the communists, again
Will the superpower put boots on lunar powder first? “I’ll be damned if that is the story that we write,” said Duffy. I think that might be a deal that the Chinese will take. Anyway, getting to the Moon will require Boeing’s Space Launch System (SLS), which has been having troubles of late. Though the recently passed Big Beautiful Bill does lay our $4.1 billion for the system, NASA as a whole is facing titanic budget cuts in President Donald Trump’s proposed 2026 budget. Oh, and apparently the SLS costs about $4 billion per launch, which Duffy is not happy with.
The emerging philosophy seems to be that NASA should do all Moon stuff, all the Moon time. Anything else, like that pesky ‘science’ that the entire world has benefited from, should get out of the way. Were this actually to happen, that would be a transformation in the nature and mission of the agency.
In the meantime, thousands of NASA’s most senior personnel have been taking the Trump administration’s buyouts, leaving the agency with a sudden lack of both workers and knowledge. And now, on top of all that, all its people with Chinese passports are gone, too, presumably leaving some projects and teams in the lurch. If America really is to return to the Moon first, it’s got a lot of challenges to overcome.
