'America First' on the moon? US must 'dominate' in space, acting NASA chief says during lunar landing

As a private lunar lander closed in on the moon early Sunday morning (March 2), poised to make history with the first fully successful landing, NASA's acting chief Janet Petro was excited.

And why not? NASA and its commercial partner Firefly Aerospace were just 24 minutes away from what became the successful landing of the Blue Ghost moon lander on the plain of Mare Crisium — a historic soft landing for a privately built spacecraft. The probe is carrying 10 instruments to study the moon for NASA as the agency's Artemis program works toward returning astronauts to the lunar surface by 2027.

"I can't tell you how excited I am right now," Petro said during the landing webcast. "To get to be here and experience a landing on the moon that's coming up, that's very, very exciting."

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But when asked by a NASA commentator why the landing was important for NASA and the U.S. space program, one of Petro's next comments stood out.

"I think this administration really wants to keep America first, and I think the way that we keep America first is by dominating in all the domains of space," Petro said, echoing the "America First" rhetoric of President Donald Trump and his current administration. "And the domain of space we're going to capture, recently tonight, is going to be on the surface of the moon, and around the moon."

"So as long as we keep dominating that space, I think we're going to be putting America first," Petro added. "We're going to make America proud. We're doing this for the U.S. citizens."

Petro said that NASA's Commercial Lunar Payloads Services program (or CLPS), under which Firefly is flying the Blue Ghost mission for NASA, is critical to building a lunar economy for the United States.

"Building that lunar economy is what's going to make us dominate in and around the moon, so we've got to do it," Petro added.

During a post-landing press conference to celebrate Blue Ghost's touchdown, a reporter asked NASA panelists about the apparent pivot in tone from the more global "for all mankind" mantra of moon exploration during the Apollo program to "America First."

While Petro did not speak at the press conference, Nicky Fox, the agency's associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, did address the question.

"I just wanted to say, you know, we are very, very proud of our CLPS program," Fox said. NASA's CLPS program, in which the agency works with commercial companies to fly payloads to the moon, began in 2018.

Firefly's Blue Ghost is flying under a $93 million deal with NASA signed in 2021 and appears to be in fine shape, capturing stunning photos from the moon's surface after a smooth landing. It is the third such flight to date under the program, following an unsuccessful flight by Astrobotic and a partial success by Intuitive Machines, both of which occurred last year. (A second Intuitive Machines lander launched on Feb. 26 and will land on March 6.)

"The idea of the CLPS program is to build a sustainable space economy with U.S. businesses, and so that has not changed at all," Fox said. "We're extremely, extremely proud of the work that our U.S. commercial companies are doing in partnership with NASA."

NASA's Artemis program, which is the agency's human spaceflight arm of moon exploration, does have international cooperation baked in, Fox added. The first crewed Artemis mission, Artemis 2, will launch in 2026 with a Canadian astronaut on board. And NASA has recruited more than 50 countries to agree to its Artemis Accords for collaborative moon exploration.

"When we talk about Artemis, we are going back as a global community. That is why we have the Artemis Accords," Fox said. "We encourage all of our partners, the U.S. partners and allies. But together with NASA and with our U.S. companies, we are going to lead the world as NASA does, and continue to inspire moving forward, doing great science, doing great exploration together."