Pentagon's Biggest Concerns about Space Revealed in New Report

Several U.S. Government departments have released a report discussing the U.S.'s progress in space and the roadblocks it faces, including a new space race with China.

The 2022 State of the Space Industrial Base Report was released jointly by The Defense Innovation Unit, the United States Space Force, and the Air Force Research Laboratory. It represents the recommendations of 350 industry experts regarding a variety of topic areas, including the economic development and human settlement of space, in-space transportation and logistics, power and propulsion, and STEM education.

"Industry feedback highlighted the need to accelerate to regain strategic leadership from China, as well as the specific actions that need to be taken," said Colonel Eric J. Felt, director of Architecture, Science & Technology at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force For Space Acquisition and Integration, in a statement.

The future of the U.S. in space is another space race, according to the report. However, this time the opposing nation will be China.

"Winning the New Space Race is a national imperative and a critical component of the preservation of liberty and prosperity in the 21st century for the United States, our allies, and partners. The rise of China as both an economic and space power is an imminent threat to democracy, the free market economy, and the international liberal order," the report reads.

"China's many achievements in space are the result of Xi Jinping's "Space Dream" (航天梦) - a long term strategy that galvanizes a whole-of-nation approach toward a singular objective: displace the U.S. as the dominant space power both militarily and economically by 2045."

The last space race was between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The intense competition pushed the two nations to fast-track space science and engineering in a race to "conquer" space. This culminated with the U.S. Apollo missions eventually landing the first humans on the moon in 1969.

This report comes as China launched a 23-tonne Wentian research lab module on July 24, designed for biological and life science research aboard the Chinese Tiangong space station. China has hopes for Tiangong to replace the International Space Station as the number one power in orbit, and aims to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. NASA is currently banned by the U.S. government from sharing its ISS data with China.

NASA also has plans for a new Moon mission in the coming decade, called Artemis, but plans to get there before the Chinese. Artemis is forecasted to achieve a crewed mission into Lunar orbit by 2024 and make a crewed landing near the Moon's south pole by 2025.

"It's not just our machines or our people that we send into space. It's our values. It's who we are. It's things like rule of law, democracy, human rights, and a free market economy" Scott Pace, director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, told CNN. "I see Artemis and our human expansion into space as a projection of our American values. It's about diplomatically shaping this new domain that we depend on."

Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said in a July statement: "The U.S. side has constantly constructed a smear campaign against China's normal and reasonable outer space endeavors, and China firmly opposes such irresponsible remarks."

While the Moon is currently the aim, some think that the real competition in the coming decades will be a race to Mars.

"The real race is who is going to be the first nation on Mars," former NASA Associate Administrator Doug Loverro told CNN. "Just as leadership of the 20th century was framed by who was first on the moon, I believe the leadership of the 21st century will be framed by who is first on Mars."