Senate hearing raises doubts about NASA’s ability to get astronauts to the moon before China

WASHINGTON — A former NASA administrator told senators he believed it was “highly unlikely” the agency would return astronauts to the moon before China landed astronauts there.

During a Sept. 3 hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee about the perceived space race between the United States and China, former administrator Jim Bridenstine said NASA’s choice of SpaceX’s Starship puts the agency at risk of falling behind China in lunar exploration.

“Look at the architecture that we have developed to land American astronauts on the moon,” he said, describing it as very complex. “It is highly unlikely that we will land on the moon before China.”

The issue he saw with that complex architecture was Starship, the reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle SpaceX is developing. A variant of Starship will serve as the lander for the Artemis 3 and 4 missions. A Starship lunar mission will require additional Starship launches — perhaps a dozen or more — of tankers to fill a propellant depot in low Earth orbit that will be used to fuel the lander for its mission to the moon.

Starship is an important vehicle for the United States, Bridenstine said, but he argued NASA erred in selecting it in early 2021 for the Human Landing System (HLS) program. “It’s a problem that needs to be solved, and that puts us as a nation at risk.”

Bridenstine suggested part of the problem was the timing of the NASA selection, which took place when NASA had only an acting administrator, Steve Jurczyk, in place. “I don’t know how this happens, but the biggest decision in the history of NASA, at least since I’ve been paying attention,” he said, “happens in the absence of a NASA administrator.”

“This is an architecture that no NASA administrator that I’m aware of would have selected if they had a choice,” he said later in his remarks.

The source selection authority — the NASA official responsible for the procurement decision — for HLS was Kathy Lueders, the associate administrator for human exploration and operations at the time. She justified the decision on the far lower price offered by SpaceX over competitors Blue Origin and Dynetics. That decision was upheld by the Government Accountability Office in a bid protest by the losing companies, and later by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims after Blue Origin filed a lawsuit against NASA.

Neither Bridenstine nor others at the two-hour hearing offered specific recommendations to address the problem he saw with the lander. In her opening statement, the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said she was concerned about the overall plan for Artemis.

“I would love to see the continued focus on dual landers given how important they are going to be for the future,” she said. NASA selected Blue Origin for a second HLS award in 2023.

Ceding the moon

Other witnesses and senators expressed more general concerns that the United States was in danger of falling behind China in spaceflight, in both low Earth orbit and at the moon.

“Without a successful Artemis program, we risk ceding the moon to China,” said Allen Cutler, president and chief executive of the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration, an industry group whose members include many of the companies working on Artemis. He argued that the United States was behind China in the development of a crewed lander, citing recent terrestrial tests of a Chinese lunar lander prototype.

Another issue is a continued presence in low Earth orbit. Mike Gold, president of civil and international space at Redwire, worried that proposed budget cuts could reduce the crew size on the U.S. segment of the International Space Station from the current four to three or two, just as biomedical and pharmaceutical research on the station is bearing fruit.

“There is no question in my mind that microgravity manufacturing will transform the pharmaceutical and biotech fields. The only question is, will those benefits be enjoyed in China or here in the United States?” he asked.

“We will lose the momentum, if not these capabilities entirely, if we drop from four to three astronauts,” he said later in the hearing, which did not explore proposed changes in NASA’s strategy for supporting commercial space stations that could mark an end to a goal of a permanent NASA human presence in low Earth orbit.

Throughout the hearing, both witnesses and senators described China as almost an implacable foe, relentlessly moving forward in space without suffering technical, programmatic or other setbacks. They contrasted that with concerns about the Artemis architecture as well as funding for NASA.

“While China may be projecting 2030” for a human lunar landing, Cantwell said, “there’s nothing to say they won’t go sooner. There are people we talk to, who are trying to brief the press about this today, who are betting that they are going to go sooner and that they are going to beat us.”

John Shaw, a retired Space Force lieutenant general, advocated for a “unified grand space strategy” for the United States that would combine economic, exploration and national security objectives.

“It is clear to me that the Chinese Communist Party is already employing its own integrated grand strategy for the Earth-moon system,” he said. “If we don’t unify and synchronize our efforts, we may find ourselves, rather than in a leadership position, in a position of increasing disadvantages.”

Those concerns extended to some in the audience at the hearing. “I think the Chinese space program, getting the moon, is way ahead of the United States right now,” said Bill Nye, chief executive of The Planetary Society, in an interview after the hearing.

He put much of the blame on the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which proposed cutting NASA’s overall budget by a quarter in fiscal year 2026, with science cut by nearly 50%. “That’s a formula for falling behind.”

“China will put its flag on the south pole of the moon. It will be on every newspaper in the world. That will be dispiriting,” he concluded.

Lack of a commercial voice

None of the witnesses at the hearing were from the two HLS companies, Blue Origin or SpaceX, or from organizations representing them.

That was not originally the case. In a change publicly announced less than 24 hours before the hearing started, the committee added Gold and Shaw to the roster of witnesses, joining Bridenstine and Cutler. The committee also removed one witness previously announced for the hearing, Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation.

The committee did not give a reason for the change. Cavossa, contacted by SpaceNews Sept. 1, before the change was announced, said he was informed by the committee several days earlier that they were moving him to a future hearing on commercial space issues. He said he did not receive any other explanation for the change.

Some industry sources speculated that the committee made the change because of worries that Cavossa might advocate for commercial alternatives to the Space Launch System, one of the central elements of Artemis. The administration’s budget proposal for NASA has called for ending SLS and Orion after Artemis 3 and using commercial vehicles for later lunar missions.

The budget reconciliation bill passed in July, though, included $4.1 billion to purchase two SLS vehicles for Artemis 4 and 5. That effort was spearheaded by the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who used his opening remarks to support continuing SLS and Orion as well as the lunar Gateway, also funded in the bill.

“Any drastic changes in NASA’s architecture at this stage threaten United States leadership in space,” he said. “Delays and disruptions only serve our competitors.”

He then cited the funding for Artemis in the budget reconciliation bill. “These missions rely on the Space Launch System and Orion capsule to reach the moon and to reach the Gateway station,” he said. “It would be folly to cut short these missions after much of the hardware has already been purchased and, in some cases, delivered, and with no commercial alternative readily available.”

“We have seen overwhelming support for maintaining these programs,” he said, from senators on both sides of the aisle. “Congress supports NASA’s exploration goals and we do not want sudden or disruptive changes that undermine America’s leadership.”