{"id":43327,"date":"2026-04-01T20:48:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-is-leading-the-way-to-the-moon-but-the-military-wont-be-far-behind\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T20:48:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T12:48:49","slug":"nasa-is-leading-the-way-to-the-moon-but-the-military-wont-be-far-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-is-leading-the-way-to-the-moon-but-the-military-wont-be-far-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA is leading the way to the Moon, but the military won\u2019t be far behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida\u2014The US military has always been part of NASA\u2019s human spaceflight program. The first astronauts were nearly all military pilots, and two of the four crew members set to fly around the Moon on NASA\u2019s Artemis II mission were Navy test pilots before joining the astronaut corps.<\/p>\n

Artemis II, the first crew mission to the Moon\u2019s vicinity since 1972, is set for launch Wednesday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Commander Reid Wiseman and pilot Victor Glover, both Navy test pilots, will be at the controls of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft for the ride to space. NASA astronaut Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen round out the four-person crew.<\/p>\n

The mission will depart from NASA property on Florida\u2019s Space Coast, but the Space Force will play an important role in the launch. A range crew from the Space Force will track the SLS rocket as it arcs over the Atlantic Ocean. Their primary job will be ensuring public safety, with the unenviable responsibility of sending a destruct signal to the rocket if it flies off course. Thankfully for the astronauts inside the spacecraft, the Orion capsule has an abort rocket to pull it away from an exploding launch vehicle in the event of a catastrophic failure.<\/p>\n

An Air Force rescue team is on standby to rapidly deploy and retrieve the Artemis II astronauts if there\u2019s an in-flight abort. Assuming everything goes well, the Navy has the charge of recovering the Orion spacecraft and its four astronauts at the end of their nine-day flight around the Moon.<\/p>\n

These responsibilities are nothing new to the military. The Space Force oversees public safety for every launch from Florida\u2019s Space Coast, whether it\u2019s a military or civilian mission. The Air Force has a long history of providing rescue support for NASA human spaceflight missions, and the Navy scooped up the Apollo astronauts when they returned from the Moon more than 50 years ago.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Guarding the Moon<\/h2>\n

What\u2019s new today is that the US military views space as a potential battlefield\u2014a \u201cwarfighting domain\u201d in Pentagon parlance. The great power competition between the United States and China already extends to space. Each nation is developing and demonstrating weapons that could disable or destroy the other\u2019s satellites in orbit, degrading their military capacities on Earth.<\/p>\n

Today, potential conflict zones in space are limited to a region between low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit, from a few hundred miles\u2019 altitude up to 22,000 miles. The Space Force is in the final stages of developing a roadmap for the next 15 years, identifying where the service needs to grow and evolve to respond to changing threats and priorities. The document hasn\u2019t been released publicly, but Pentagon officials have said it will address the possibility of the Moon or cislunar space, the region of space around the Moon, becoming a theater for military operations.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This mosaic of the Moon\u2019s south pole region was made from approximately 1,500 images from the Clementine spacecraft, a joint NASA-DOD mission in the 1990s that discovered the first hints of water ice inside permanently shadowed craters.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA\/JPL\/USGS<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

President Trump signed an executive order in December that, among other things, directs the government to ensure the ability to detect, characterize, and counter threats to US space interests all the way out to the Moon.<\/p>\n

Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, believes it is time for the Space Force to expand its reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do need to begin integrating cislunar capability into the Space Force,\u201d Ainsworth said at an industry conference in March. \u201cWe are serious about that. We are going to be standing up leadership positions and integration points where we can start bringing those technologies in and actually have a plan to execute them going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

A month earlier, in February, the top general in charge of US Space Command shared a similar view.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a location for potential military operations in the future, so at US Space Command, we are very interested in being able to track what\u2019s happening in cislunar space,\u201d said Gen. Stephen Whiting. \u201cNASA is about to take us back to the Moon with the Artemis II mission, and then the follow-on missions go back to the surface. The Chinese are operating in cislunar space with some of their launches. And, of course, they have aspirations to go back with humans on the surface as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Military units operating under the auspices of Space Command will turn their attention toward Artemis II as it transits to the Moon. Whiting said Space Command will use the opportunity to rehearse and refine tactics, techniques, and procedures by tracking the spacecraft\u2019s location and maneuvers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny time we know something is going to the Moon, we\u2019re going to use it,\u201d Whiting told Ars in February.<\/p>\n

Space Command is one of the military\u2019s combatant commands. Central Command covers the Middle East, Northern Command operates in North America, and Southern Command is responsible for South America. European and Africa Commands cover those continents. Indo-Pacific Command is the largest of the military\u2019s terrestrial combatant commands. Space Command covers everything else, from an altitude of 100 kilometers extending out to infinity.<\/p>\n

Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force\u2019s senior general who sits on the joint chiefs of staff, said the Defense Department is still figuring out its role as human activity expands in the Solar System.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs US interests go farther and farther into space, there\u2019s going to be a need to protect and defend those interests,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cThat\u2019s where we get involved. So, we\u2019ve got to pay attention to exactly what is it that NASA is going to do? How far are they going? What is the PRC (China) doing in cislunar [space]? What are their interests there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Artemis II mission is not going to the Moon this month.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

NASA announced an overhaul of its Artemis lunar program last week. The agency is canceling development of a space station in orbit around the Moon to focus on a permanent base on the surface.<\/p>\n

The Moon is big\u2014it has slightly less surface area than the continent of Asia\u2014but it\u2019s not too fanciful to imagine a scenario where different nations or companies might have their eyes on the same piece of real estate. Some places are more ripe for exploration than others. Near the Moon\u2019s south pole, there are eternally dark craters that harbor water ice deposits, and peaks of eternal light that offer access to near-continuous sunlight. The Moon has resources that could enable further exploration, and some minerals that might be economically useful if brought back to Earth.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to make sure that we\u2019re not surprised at cislunar space, and that some other actor doesn\u2019t begin to use it for military advantage,\u201d Saltzman said.<\/p>\n

First follower<\/h2>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re involved in the discussions because we have a role to play, but we\u2019re not the lead. NASA\u2019s got it,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cWe\u2019re about to send astronauts back to the Moon. That\u2019s pretty exciting. So that is going to drive a lot of the system and discussions. I just don\u2019t want to get caught flat-footed when we start to have to protect US interests out there, so we\u2019re along for the ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what, exactly, are US interests at the Moon?<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it physical, meaning there\u2019s space on the Moon that we have to protect? I don\u2019t know yet. I\u2019m still waiting for that to unfold,\u201d Saltzman said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I say we\u2019re not leading that effort, but we want to be involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be sure, there are no plans for anything like the Moon Marines sent to the lunar surface in the Apple TV series For All Mankind<\/em>. The military\u2019s initial assignment at the Moon will be much the same role it played in Earth orbit for most of the Space Age: observing and cataloging traffic.<\/p>\n

The first military mission to fly to the Moon this century is undergoing development by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Named Oracle, the project will consist of at least two small satellites. One of them will focus on demonstrating mobility and navigation in cislunar space, while the other will detect and track known and unknown objects around the Moon.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman delivers a keynote address during the Space Force Association\u2019s Spacepower Convention in Orlando, Florida, on December 11, 2025.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n US Air Force photo by Chad Trujillo<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

NASA and the Space Force anticipate more traffic in cislunar space as crew missions, robotic orbiters and landers, and international spacecraft travel to and from the Moon. The number of missions planned to go to the Moon will fall far short of the some-45,000 objects the Space Force routinely tracks closer to Earth.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

But observing objects in cislunar space from the Earth is not easy. First, the Moon is a quarter-million miles away, so spacecraft or debris will appear vanishingly faint to sensors near the Earth. The Moon and the Sun far outshine these objects. Second, using a satellite stationed near the Moon to obtain a fix and vector for an object requires precise navigation, a capability not readily available without reliable GPS signals.<\/p>\n

If anyone knows exactly where a satellite is around the Moon today, it is due to the generosity of its operator. If they choose to, spacecraft owners can provide detailed ephemeris data, revealing their location and movement, but there\u2019s no way to force any operator to publish this information. Some operators may not want to share their location for competitive or strategic advantage.<\/p>\n

There is also the risk of a satellite breakup in lunar orbit that could create a field of space debris. There is currently no way to track such small fragments at lunar distances, raising the risk of damaging or destructive collisions. If a lunar satellite disintegrated, it could \u201ccompromise international science missions and destabilize emerging lunar economic activity,\u201d according to a 2025 report from the Mitre Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that manages several federally funded research centers.<\/p>\n

Some generals bring the subject of lunar military operations back to Earth. In 2024, Ars asked Space Force Maj. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, then a one-star general, about the military\u2019s view of the Moon. He identified a potential adversary\u2019s use of the Moon or orbits around them as a launch point for an attack directed at US assets closer to the Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not fighting over mineral deposits on an asteroid somewhere. We\u2019re not, right now, shepherding convoys to Mars,\u201d Mastalir said. \u201cThese are terrestrial conflicts that we hope we can deter. We also don\u2019t want them to, although it\u2019s more and more likely that they may, extend into space or even start in space.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeday in the future, that may change, but for now, I\u2019d be more concerned just about what these new orbits present, what that does for potential attack vectors to our traditional operating [areas].\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida\u2014The US military has always been part of NASA\u2019s human spaceflight program. The first astronauts were nearly all military pilots, and two of the four crew members set to fly around the Moon on NASA\u2019s Artemis II mission were Navy test pilots before joining the astronaut corps. Artemis II, the first crew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43327"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}