In a moment like the one we are living in, with international relations that seem more than ever characterized by uncertainty, space plays an important role in the complex calculation of power relations. Without the use of satellites, for example, global positioning systems would not exist, military surveillance and the collection of information on possible threats to security would be significantly more difficult. From an environmental perspective, moreover, meteorological or pollution monitoring would be considerably less effective. Earth observation capabilities, in fact, have now become fundamental both from a security perspective and for the prevention of damages linked to climate change.
In this context, we are looking with ever greater interest at the many opportunities offered by space and, in particular, by our natural satellite, once a solitary nocturnal beacon admired only by astronomers, poets and couples in love.
The Americans are currently the only ones to have conducted a program capable of bringing humans to the lunar surface. However, the gauntlet has now been thrown down (in space) by other countries, led by China, and this has given a decisive acceleration to the competition.
It is a technological, geopolitical and anthropological race, where the natural human impulse to explore merges with the cold reality of power rivalries. A race that is continuously recording new progress, a tangible sign of the intense activity that is characterizing this return to space exploration, and towards the Moon in particular, where the goal is to establish permanent inhabited bases for both scientific purposes and for resource extraction and for the development of logistical infrastructure for future interplanetary missions.
Unlike what happened in the 20th century, however, the new race to the Moon today sees both state and private actors competing to achieve important goals on a key strategic theatre, in a multipolar geopolitical framework that is decidedly more complex than in the past.
A picture that sees on one side the West, in the broadest sense, gathered around the United States and on the other China, which proposes itself as leader of the global south.
Consequently, if the USA, thanks to its past experience, is racing to return to the Moon, China is developing its own program in pursuit of the Americans, in a sort of space re-edition of Aesop's fable "The Tortoise and the Hare".
In this situation, theEurope is neither a hare nor a tortoise since, while she forgets to do, too busy writing the rules, she seems to have rather chosen the role of supporting actor of the film that is developing under the starry sky of the American flag.
Another "runner" is also taking part in the race: India, which is proposing itself through its authority and ability, torn between the two sides, aspiring to belong to a system different from the current one, dominated by the USA, but still having strong rivalries with China.
But let's see briefly what is happening.
United States and China
With the program “Artemis”, carried out by NASA and from U.S. commercial spaceflight companies, and the partnerships di European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace eXploration Agency (JAXA) and Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the US aims to return crews to the Moon, with the long-term goals of establishing a viable presence there, laying the groundwork for private companies to launch a lunar economy, and ultimately human flights to Mars.
From a technical point of view, the program includes, in short, a Space launch system (SLS) of NASA with the spacecraft "Orion", which should ensure the transportation of the crew to the Moon, two Human Landing Systems (HLS) for the moon landing and a Lunar Orbital Platform-Getaway (LOP-G), to ensure a permanent presence in lunar orbiti.
However, at the moment it seems that there is some delay in achieving the objectives dictated by the program, which is much talked about but little seen, so much so that the "Artemis II" mission, for example, from the initial forecast of April has been postponed to September 2025, officially due to an abnormal wear of the heat shield recorded during the "Artemis I" mission. Overall, however, it seems like a sort of "Waiting for Godot" in American sauce, which gives the impression that the priorities of the program are not determined by politics but by the private interests of some actors. In this context, one wonders, with ill-concealed concern, whether any new objectives of the Trump Administration 2.0 may have called into question the "Artemis" program and, with it, the European contribution, in favor of similar initiatives but conducted by private actors, such as Space X for example.
At the moment, however, the "Artemis" program (and, therefore, cooperation with the USA) still appears attractive, given that it has been signed by as many as 53 countries.iiIn this context, the Western bloc has almost entirely joined and the list of signatories also includes many emerging countries, such as India and Brazil, formally belonging to the BRICS.
Il Chinese space program, instead, marvel at the breadth and consistency with which partial objectives are achieved. The finger of the world points toward the Moon and the Chinese constantly look at our natural satellite.
In response to the “Artemis” program, Beijing is therefore developing its own space program with exceptional regularity, without world-record leaps, but systematically reaching each of the deadlines set out in the calendar, with the aim of to put a Chinese astronaut on the Moon by 2029, an essential prelude to the installation of the permanent ILRS base (International Lunar Research Station) on our natural satellite.
With the Chang'e-6 mission (June-July 2024), Beijing has also consolidated the progress made in precision and reliability of its means and extended its presence to the far side of our natural satellite, from which it brought back approximately 2 kg of lunar soil samples, taken near the south pole-Aitken, a key region for a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the Moon.
However, Beijing's support for Moscow's aggression against Kiev precludes the Chinese from any advanced level collaboration with major Western space technology suppliers such as the United States, Italy and France and this could have serious repercussions on the Chang'e-7 mission, currently scheduled for 2026, which could suffer delays due to possible problems in the supply of the material needed for the Rover "Rashid-2". A delay that could push forward the entire Chinese program.
While the US seems to be struggling to keep up with its program, China is chasing and has reached a milestone towards future human missions and permanence on the lunar soil, having a very interested eye on the future exploitation of the resources of our satellite.
But the Chinese program also has another objective, a completely geopolitical one. Beijing, in fact, wants demonstrate to the global South that it can effectively challenge the West (United States in the lead), proposing itself as leader undisputed of BRICS & Co.
In this respect, the space competition between the US and China brings to mind the confrontation between the US and the USSR during the Cold War. In this context, one cannot help but notice the different approach towards the outside by the two main actors. Now as then, The US is favoring international cooperation, integrating many countries into the initiative. It remains to be seen, however, whether the new Trump administration, intent on reducing the strategic value of multilateralism, will maintain this approach.
China, on the other hand, like the Soviet Union of the time, proceeds in a substantially independent manner, with the creation of a solid national space program as its main objective. Most of the 13 member countriesiii in fact, at ILRS, it has no experience in space exploration and, therefore, the non-Chinese technical-scientific contribution is rather low, if not substantially zero. Although Beijing is trying (in words) to broaden the support base for its space program, it probably does not exert the same attraction as Washington and consequently represents the (only) true technological locomotive of the initiative, given the evident serious slowdown in Russian space activities. In this sense, it seems that around the ILRS program there have gathered allies rather than partners. A significant difference.
The other actors
One of the main characteristics of the contemporary spatial panorama is the presence of new actors, both state and civil, who are no longer content to remain on the margins of the scene but who propose themselves as protagonists.
In this context, if the plans of New Delhi are respected, this year India could be the fourth country to organize and manage autonomously the sending of humans into space. A political and strategic step aimed mainly at the cumbersome neighbors, China and Pakistan, with which India has old unresolved grudges. However, far from being a point of arrival, this result could effectively represent its first chapter of an extremely ambitious space policy, as recalled several times by the Prime minister Narendra Modi. During one of these, on October 17, 2023, riding the wave of enthusiasm for the successful moon landing of the probe Chandrayaan-3 (August 2023) near the lunar South Pole, a feat never achieved before by the USA, Russia or China, he highlighted how he would like to be able to complete the programme by 2035 "Bharatiya Antariskha Station", the Indian space stationiv, to send the first astronaut to the Moon by 2040 and to build a permanent base there by 2050. A much tighter timetable than that of China, already particularly ambitious. In this way India intends to offer non-aligned countries an alternative to the Chinese and US models.
The Tokyo has set its sights on the Moon. The SLIM mission (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) successfully landed on the lunar surface on January 19, 2024, allowing its two lunar modules – Lunar Excursion Vehicle LEV 1 and 2 - to carry out scientific surveys. Japan has thus become the fifth country to have successfully brought a vehicle to the surface of our satellite, after the United States, Russia, China and India. The main purpose of the mission, which ended in June 2024, was however to make a precision moon landing (accuracy of 100 m), using mainly facial recognition technology, in order to identify craters and rock formations on the lunar surface to facilitate the maneuver. A remarkable precision, if we consider that the Apollo 11 “Eagle” module landed on the moon in 1969 counting on a precision within an area of 20 x 5 km.
Then there are the outsider exquisitely civil including Space X, funded mainly by government contracts, to which it owes much of its vitality, which looks to the Moon with the aim of creating a lunar economy that can serve as a springboard to Mars.
For its part, the Blue Origin has set itself the goal of building permanent space infrastructures that can serve to extract lunar resources but also to create a self-sustaining ecosystem outside of Earth's orbit. All goals that, once achieved, could radically change the foundations of the world economy.
THEEurope is, instead, substantially absent from this race for space autonomy, while it is content to give support to others. We said that the finger of the world points towards the Moon but the EU, with rare exceptions, looks with extraordinary attention ... at the finger. Too busy making the rules, in fact, does not demonstrate sufficient ambition and imagination to propose itself as leader. A lack of imagination and ambition that prevents her from appearing in the opening credits of this gripping film, which tickles very delicate buttons from important geopolitical and strategic implications, economic, technological and anthropological. A Europe unable to seriously and effectively address its main internal disputes and to remove the obstacles that prevent the coherent growth of European technology companies.
These are the main reasons why we continue to witness an Old Continent that could authoritatively participate in the competition as a supporting actor, but which prefers to play minor roles, continually torn apart by internal political friction within the EU and individual member states, prey to blind utopias in which frugal countries impose on everyone to proceed with the handbrake on and delusions related to a crumbling sovereignism that looks back without seeing the damage caused in the past and, above all, without realizing the damage it is causing today. This means that, despite the enviable Italian and French technological skills in the specific sector, for example, Unfortunately, companies cannot rely on a common, ambitious and sufficiently stable political vision to further develop their skills, conditions which are instead necessary to compete effectively with the competitors Americans and Chinese.
The lack of adequate and constant public, state and community investments, essential to attract private investments, therefore forces Europe to be largely dependent on US initiatives for the realization of its space ambitions.
It is easy to understand the profound implications of this fact: progressive downgrading and overall isolation of the geopolitical role of the Union and its members. A shadow that casts itself inescapably towards the future.
Conclusions
We are living in a second space age, after the first which was the “Apollo” program, always with the Moon as the protagonist.
The goal today is no longer "just" a moonwalk, for scientific purposes, but a prolonged stay on our satellite and the exploitation of its resources, while looking very insistently in the direction of Mars. The dream of leaving Earth and visiting other worlds, in fact, is almost as old as humanity. In recent years, technology seems to have found some answers that could make this ancestral dream come true tomorrow. Stephen Hawking himself was convinced that our species should become multi-planetary, leaving Earth and establishing permanent colonies in space or on other celestial bodies, not only for the extraction of resources or for military purposes, but also in order to ensure its own long-term survival.
But the vision of the current space actors is more long-term and, as mentioned, goes well beyond the "simple" question of scientific exploration. It is for this reason that the purely geopolitical aspects of the new race to the Moon should not be ignored, which mirror those of the last century (technological, military, economic supremacy) and are increased by new reasons for competition, such as formation of geopolitical groups that are substantially opposed to the West. One thing, however, seems certain today: the Chinese flag will find its place on the lunar surface (we will see if before or after the return of the USA) and, most likely, the Indian flag will also achieve this result, enormously increasing the contractual and geopolitical weight of the two countries also on the issues of this world.
However, the The presence of private companies in this delicate strategic sector raises disturbing doubts and perplexities. Are the States, so far the only interpreters of this film, thinking of seeking the tools to control the actions of companies that, already today, have space capabilities equal to (or superior to) those of the main powers of the world? Will they be able to maintain a balance of power with these companies, both technologically and geopolitically? Or will they be slaves to their skills and economic possibilities, and therefore substantially unable to develop an independent space (but also planetary) policy?
In this respect, the Americans seem to be more "exposed" because, in addition to allowing companies to claim ownership of any resources extracted in space (Space Act of 2015), the owners of these companies are today welcomed at court with all the honors (and related delicate government positions). The Chinese, on the other hand, implement another type of approach, in line with the history of that country, namely a strict political control over strategic activities considering, at least officially, that the resources should be extracted in a framework of international cooperation, under strict state control, in accordance with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
In the meantime, if Europe does not put aside its internal divisions, it may have to settle for a a seat in the shade of the stars and stripes flag. Proof of this is that, despite the enormous European technological contribution to some essential modules of the “Orion” spacecraft and the new LOP-G station, a Canadian astronaut was invited to participate in the “Artemis II” mission and the first non-American to land on the lunar soil should be a Japanese.
The future multipolar space has significant strategic implications and the appearance of such a diverse group of actors inevitably entails a reconfiguration of the balance of power in the specific domain. As the Moon becomes increasingly accessible, competition will no longer be limited to economic or scientific aspects, but will become (and in part already is) inevitably a geopolitical issue, which will no longer concern two opposing blocs, but will require effective and authoritative multilateral coordination.
And here a new delicate question arises: will the Moon become a laboratory for international cooperation or the scene of yet another geopolitical fragmentation? Initiatives such as the “Artemis” agreements tend to create a shared regulatory framework for the exploitation of lunar resources, but they remain agreements limited to a group, however large, of countries. The challenge will therefore be to be able to reconcile the complex needs of the various actors in a multilateral context, in order to avoid a situation of anarchy. The choice is between multilateralism, which would mitigate competition, and accentuate cooperation., creating the basis for peaceful interplanetary exploration, or individualism, which could make the Moon the great battlefield of a new fragmented space order.
A Chinese moon landing before the US returns would mark a momentous image victory for that country, and would have a significant negative impact on US voters that the Trump administration could not ignore.
For other international players, thinking that the current space competition can be relegated to a simple doctrinal clash would be nothing more than a gross strategic error (read article “Space: Geopolitics, Economics and Defense").
European politics and some of its members should, therefore, take an example from those who still want to dream and look far ahead, realistically addressing the current geopolitical evolution, which essentially sees a progressive US disengagement from multilateral logic, and stripping themselves of the usual low-level butchery calculations, perhaps good for temporarily maintaining power, but completely useless in a broader and longer-term perspective, so that even the Old Continent can be able to make the transition from mere science fiction to something that could materialize sooner than we can imagine.
i It is an automatic platform that can be visited/inhabited for short periods even by astronauts.
iii China, Russia, Venezuela, South Africa, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Belarus, Egypt, Thailand, Nicaragua, Serbia, Kazakhstan and Senegal.
iv This will make India the fourth country to have its own space station, after the United States, Russia and China.
Photo: OpenAI / NASA / Xinhua / JAXA
