Space has once again opened up as a front for conflict between the great powers.

Artemis II was the first US lunar mission in over 50 years, bringing humans 252,756 miles away from the Earth. But this advance in space travel is hardly in the name of “human progress.” As the US Transport Secretary Sean Duffy bluntly said: “We’re in a race to the moon, in a race with China to the moon. And to have a base on the moon, we need energy.”

NASA has set bold objectives to get Americans back on the moon by the end of Trump’s second term. Why the rush? In 2019, China completed the first-ever soft landing on the dark side of the moon. That same year, Chinese officials announced their intention to conduct a crewed landing on the moon. Then, in 2021, Russia and China entered an agreement to build a long-term base on the moon, the International Lunar Research Station.

In the early 1950s, space travel was only a sci-fi fantasy in the minds of many. Then, the Soviet Union shocked the world with the 1957 launch of Sputnik 1. They continued to blaze ahead, getting the first animal, Laika the dog, then the first human, Yuri Gagarin, into space. Panic fell upon the strategists of US imperialism, who were humiliated by Soviet leadership in the stars.

In response, NASA was founded in 1958. In July 1969, Neil Armstrong staked an American flag on the moon’s surface—the basis of US imperialism self-proclaimed victory in the Space Race.

Decades later, threatened by the rise of Russia and China, the US is once again competing for domination beyond our atmosphere.