NASA is preparing ANOTHER moon mission in the race against China’s Disneyland base

NASA’s next lunar rover is nearing completion as the US ramps up efforts for a third moon landing attempt this year.

The US and China are competing for the moon’s mysterious south pole, which both countries say is the most feasible location for a permanent moon base.

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After a fiery failure and a botched landing, the US’s third lunar robot is set to roll out to the launch pad in 2024.

NASA’s Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover – known as VIPER – will begin its journey to the moon later this year.

“All VIPER flight instruments have been installed and the rover is more than 80% built!” VIPER project manager Dan Andrews wrote in a NASA blog message earlier this week.

“This is a major achievement and shows the great progress being made by the dedicated VIPER team, who are excited to see the rover come together.”

VIPER will land near the moon’s south pole with the mission to search for water-based ice and other resources to aid future astronauts on the Artemis III mission.

Artemis III is currently scheduled to launch in 2026.

Peregrine & Odysseus: One fiery failure and a failed landing

NASA’s Peregrine lunar lander was intended to be the US’s first moon landing in 50 years, until it was succeeded by a tipsy Odysseus.

US vs China

The ongoing saber-rattling between the US and China has led to a renaissance of the space race of the 1960s.

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has long viewed China as the most capable adversary to set foot on the moon by the end of this decade.

But a task that may be more difficult than transporting people to the moon is building a sustainable infrastructure where people can survive off-planet.

And China – not surprisingly – has big plans for this.

A research paper from scientists at the China National Space Administration earlier this week revealed that the country plans to build a moon base the size of Disneyland.

An “all-seeing” Skynet CCTV system with more than 600 million cameras will be installed inside the base, presumably on Beijing’s orders, to spy on Chinese citizens on Earth.

The planned moon base has a radius of 6 km and includes a command center, a power plant, a communications center, scientific facilities and a fleet of robots.

It will even have its own remote sensing, navigation and communications satellites.

China hopes to start construction of the moon base within the next few years and have a stripped-down version of the outpost by 2028.

In January, Nelson said he believed China’s “race” to the moon’s south pole was over.

The NASA chief announced that the agency is now targeting September 2026 for its Artemis III mission, the first human mission on the moon since Apollo 17.

“I’m not concerned that China will land before us,” Nelson told reporters at the time.

“I think China has a very aggressive plan. I think they would want to land before us because that could give them a PR coup.

‘But the fact is that I don’t think that will be the case.

“I think it’s true that their announced date is getting earlier and earlier.

“But specifically, as we land in September ’26, that will be the first landing.”

Nelson fears China will violate the 1967 Outer Space Treaty if Beijing were to beat Washington at the post.