3 min readJun 1, 2026 06:00 AM IST First published on: Jun 1, 2026 at 06:00 AM ISTLast week, NASA announced an ambitious roadmap for sustained operations on the Moon over the next decade. The agency reportedly envisions creating a base on the lunar South Pole in three parts: Getting to the moon’s surface and beginning experiments from 2026 to 2029; “initial operations”, including potential nuclear power installations in the next three years; and commencing work on a “semi-permanent” human station after 2032. The choice of location is significant. Unlike many regions of the Moon, where periods of sunlight and darkness alternate about every two weeks, parts of the South Pole experience shorter periods of shadow. They can thus provide solar power to drive the base’s energy operations. At the same time, scientists believe that ice deposits in the region’s permanently shadowed parts contain records of how water and other materials moved through the solar system. Studying these samples could help understand processes that created conditions for life.The lunar outpost is also expected to be a staging ground for expeditions to Mars. According to NASA, it could provide the first “long-term opportunity to study human physiological adaptation in a reduced-gravity field before a deep space voyage”. This endeavour is closely tied to geopolitics. Over the past decade, China has built a robust space programme that has landed rovers on the Moon and brought lunar samples to its laboratories. Beijing and Moscow have also announced plans to build a nuclear-powered international space station within 100 km of the lunar South Pole. In other words, unlike the largely symbolic space competition of the last century between America and the Soviet Union, the race to the Moon and beyond is about gaining early access to strategically significant regions outside the Earth.AdvertisementNASA’s plans assign a prominent role to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s aerospace company, Blue Origin, which has been tasked to develop heavy-lift rockets, lunar landers and early infrastructure for the project. Although Elon Musk’s SpaceX doesn’t seem to have found a place in the programme announced last week, its partnership with NASA remains central to America’s space ambitions. The convergence of great-power rivalry and commercial interests could accelerate scientific progress. At the same time, there are concerns that the Cold War-era legal framework is ill-equipped to govern the changing dimensions of space exploration. There is, of course, little prospect of an imminent confrontation between the US-led Artemis programme and the Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station. However, the emergence of competing legal regimes risks fragmenting scientific cooperation at a time when challenges such as climate change demand collaboration between nations. Mechanisms must be found to ensure that scientific advancement, rather than geopolitical competition, remains the principal driver of space exploration.