Why Nasa chief warns moon’s south pole may become ‘another South China Sea’?

 

Voice 9, International Desk: Bill Nelson, the administrator of Nasa, said at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday that if China sends astronauts to the moon's south pole first, it might take possession of the area. He said, "If you look at pictures of the south pole, it’s not like what you saw where Neil and Buzz were landing, constantly lit from the sun and a few craters here and there," Nelson said.

"The south pole of the moon is pockmarked with deep craters... Because of the angle of the sun coming in, most of those craters are in total darkness the entire time, which lessens the amount of area you can actually land on and utilize."

Nelson used the Spratly Island dispute to support his assertion that a new space race is underway. "You see the actions of the Chinese government on Earth. They go out and claim some international islands in the South China Sea as theirs and build military runways on them," he said at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday.

He claimed there weren't numerous spots on the south pole of the moon where resources might be used, and the terrain was substantially different from the area chosen for earlier landings.

The US and China, according to Nelson, are competing to be the first to extract the water ice that is thought to be locked at the lunar south pole.

The interests of the global community must be safeguarded. We want to make sure that water is available to everyone, not just the person who is claiming it, if we do discover water in large quantities that may be used by future crews and spacecraft. "It’s not a race, because it’s not just the US and China that are going to the moon. Lots of countries are going there for different reasons," he said.