<div style="text-align: justify; "><span style="font-size: 1rem;">The US is "in a space race with China to go back to the moon", says Nasa chief Bill Nelson.</span><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a BBC interview, Mr Nelson says he wants to make sure "we get there first".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">His comments revive memories of the 1960s and 1970s, when Nasa was in a space race with the Soviet Union. But half a century later, Nasa is employing private companies to do much more of the work.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Nelson says they are crucial because it allows for the huge costs to be shared, and for Nasa to draw on "the creativity of entrepreneurs in the private sector".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He points to Elon Musk's SpaceX, which in 2021 was awarded a $3bn (£2.4bn) contact to build a lunar lander, and has also developed the most powerful rocket ever built.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Other private firms are also feeling the benefit of the space race. Earlier this year the agency signed a $3.4bn deal with Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin - also to build a lander, but for later moon landings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those are just two companies that are benefitting from billions of dollars of government funding. It's money that is being spent, in part at least, to try and keep ahead of China amid much broader tensions between the world's two biggest economies.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In late August, India became the fourth nation to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and the first to reach the lunar south pole region.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite that success, China's space program is the one most closely watched by Nasa.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">China is the only country to have its own space station, it has already brought moon samples back to earth, and it has plans to reach the polar regions of the lunar surface.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This worries Mr Nelson: "What I'm concerned about is that we find water on the south pole of the moon, China gets there, and China says this is our area. You can't come here, it's ours."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Nelson argues that China's actions to build artificial islands in order to claim sovereignty over parts of the South China Sea support his concern.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Nelson also points out that China has not signed up to the US-led Artemis Accords, intended as a framework for best practice in space and on the Moon.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">China says it is committed to the peaceful exploration of space, and has previously dismissed US concerns about its space programme as "a smear campaign against China's normal and reasonable outer space endeavours".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The rivalry is spurring huge investment by Nasa. In the year to the end of September 2021 the agency says its spending was worth $71.2bn to the US economy - a 10.7% increase on the year before.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While big names like SpaceX might attract the headlines, Nasa's spending reaches much further into the economy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"A quarter of our spending is going to small businesses," says Mr Nelson.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That money can accelerate the growth of small firms, particularly start-ups, says Sinead O'Sullivan, a former Nasa engineer and now space economist at Harvard Business School.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The government often acts as a first customer to start-up firms and those contracts can allow them to approach private investors and raise even more money, she says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"A lot of the time we talk about venture capital and private equity, however, governments are equally if not more important," Ms O'Sullivan says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The race back to the moon might be high profile, but it has helped spur an explosion in other space activity that could be far more profitable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1957 Russia became the first country to put a satellite in orbit as it fought the original space race with the US. Now there are just over 10,500 satellites orbiting earth, according to the European Space Agency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Over the last decade, Chad Andersen founder of investment firm Space Capital, credits SpaceX for spurring the industry on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The only reason that we're speaking about space as an investment category today is because of SpaceX," he says. "A little over 10 years ago, before their first commercial flight, the entire market was really government dominated."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">About half of the satellites now in orbit were launched in the last three years, according to analytics firm BryceTech.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's mainly thanks to just two companies One Web and Elon Musk's Starlink.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The space economy is much broader than just rockets and satellite hardware. It is the invisible backbone that powers our global economy," explains Mr Anderson.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With the growing number of satellites in orbit he says an increasing number of companies are finding new uses for the data they provide, including in the agriculture, insurance and maritime industries. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>