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For more than half a century, humans forgot about the moon. Now, we can't seem to get back there soon enough. US space agency NASA has laid out an ambitious timeline setting out how it plans to establish a permanent moon base by 2032. What we saw is a little bit more detail on the exact equipment and infrastructure that has now been awarded companies and the timing that NASA is expecting uh from these groups to deliver on the surface of the moon. The companies that will provide the landing craft and rovers to help build the base include Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin. 2 The first phase will be a return to the moon by astronauts from NASA's Artemis program planned in 2027 and 2028.
These represent the first of more than a dozen missions we expect to announce through the balance of this year as we return, build the base, and never give up the moon again. With moon base, Artemis astronauts will stay longer, explore farther, and conduct the kinds of science that advances exploration itself. Understanding how humans operate off-world, how we build infrastructure, and how we prepare for Mars. When the US returns to the moon, it will have to share. China has been launching what it calls taikonauts to its own space station for 5 years. It also has its eyes on the moon.
This new space race is a little bit different as well, right? You have a it's two coalitions. You have a US-led coalition as part of the Artemis program, which Australia is a part of, and you have a Chinese-Russian-led one, emphasis there on Chinese-led one. And that has other countries as well, Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Venezuela. The two parties are the US and China leading this and it is about establishing themselves first and long-term. This isn't about getting someone to the moon, spending a couple of hours and coming back home. This is semi operating on the moon not for moon exploration but to use this as a scientific and infrastructure outpost going forward.
Scientists say one reason for the surge of interest is what can be gained from being on the moon. After all, there's a reason multi-billionaires such as Elon Musk have made the moon a key space priority. Now we have the same groups building the space equipment also interested in aspects like AI data centers, right? The new AI revolution is actually partially solved if you deploy all of this infrastructure in space and everyone knows this. There is a very clear reason why a few months ago SpaceX and Elon Musk shifted from we want to get to Mars to we're going to do a lot around the moon and eventually Mars in the future and that is not exploration, that is use and exploitation.
But announcing timelines, says Brad Tucker, and achieving them are two very different things. One of the aspects of this is they're heavily reliant on the private sector to deliver and it's not just SpaceX, it's not just Blue Origin, there's a number of other companies that have already developed landers for the moon, equipment for the moon and really the onus is on them to deliver. As much as space technology has evolved, the dangers are immense, especially when it comes to keeping humans alive in a harsh environment in bases that will be powered by nuclear reactors. The overtone of really what's going to go wrong is the human aspect, right? The expensive difficult part of all of this is having a human survive.
Humans are very needy fiddly creatures when it comes to the harsh conditions of space. So you have to build the housing infrastructure, resources, backups, and safety nets all to keep humans going, and that becomes a trick. If there's an issue with a scientific team in Antarctica, they can be evacuated last minute. If they're around the International Space Station, we can get them home fairly quickly, as we have seen in the past few months. Those cases are not the same on the moon. If all goes according to plan, in several years, there will be no going back. Moon bases will go from science fiction to reality.
