{"id":134309,"date":"2025-09-11T03:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T03:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/134309\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T03:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T03:24:07","slug":"nasa-blocks-chinese-nationals-from-working-on-its-space-programs-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/134309\/","title":{"rendered":"Nasa blocks Chinese nationals from working on its space programs | Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nasa<\/a> has begun barring Chinese nationals with valid visas from joining its programs, underscoring the intensifying space race between the the US and China.<\/p>\n

The policy shift was first reported by Bloomberg News and confirmed by the US government agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cNasa has taken internal action pertaining to Chinese nationals, including restricting physical and cybersecurity access to our facilities, materials and network to ensure the security of our work,\u201d Nasa<\/a> press secretary Bethany Stevens said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

According to Bloomberg, Chinese nationals had previously been allowed to work as contractors or students contributing to research, although not as staff.<\/p>\n

But on 5 September several individuals told the outlet they were suddenly locked out of IT systems and barred from in-person meetings. They spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

The move comes amid escalating anti-China rhetoric under President Donald Trump\u2019s administration<\/a>. The US and China are competing to send crews to the moon.<\/p>\n

The US Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo landings from 1969-72, is targeting a 2027 landing but has suffered cost overruns and delays.<\/p>\n

China, by contrast, aims to land its \u201ctaikonauts\u201d by 2030 under its program and has recently been more successful at meeting deadlines.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in a second space race right now,\u201d Nasa\u2019s acting administrator, Sean Duffy, said on Wednesday at a news conference related to discoveries made with a US rover on Mars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chinese want to get back to the moon before us. That\u2019s not going to happen. America has led in space in the past and we are going to continue to lead in space in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

China is also seeking to become the first country to return a sample from the Martian surface, with a robotic mission slated to launch in 2028 and bring rocks back as soon as 2031.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration, meanwhile, has signalled through its budget proposal that it wants to cancel a planned Mars sample return (MSR) mission, a joint project with the European Space Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It has hinted the job could instead be accomplished by a crewed mission, although no firm details have been provided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nasa has begun barring Chinese nationals with valid visas from joining its programs, underscoring the intensifying space race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-134309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}