- We're way ahead of China in any space endeavor.

We need to make sure we stay ahead.

We've gotta make sure that we can counter their capability, but also prevent them from using space as a domain in any future conflict.

(laid-back electronic music) - Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today, we are blasting off into the great beyond for a look at a critical domain for global security, international cooperation, and scientific discovery: outer space.

The 1967 UN Space Treaty was supposed to keep space peaceful, but amid rising global tensions, U.S. space and intelligence experts warn our adversaries may soon renege on that agreement, turning the final frontier into the next battleground for geopolitical conflict.

So today we are talking with someone who understands that risk and knows space better than anyone in Congress, Senator Mark Kelly.

Late this summer, Kelly's name was floated as being on the shortlist for Kamala Harris's VP pick.

But when I spoke with him, he was best known for a different kind of floating: logging more than 50 days in low Earth orbit.

The former NASA astronaut and Space Shuttle commander currently sits on the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, and we are talking all about the future U.S. space policy.

Don't worry, I've also got your "Puppet Regime."

- I thought you might play hardball, Vladimir.

So I have a deal for you, something beautiful.

- But first a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

- [Announcer 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

(dramatic orchestral music) - [Announcer 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (uplifting orchestral music continues) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Narrator 1] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and.

(upbeat rock music) (tense electronic music) - We copy you down, Eagle.

- [Neil] Tranquility base here.

The Eagle has landed.

- [Coordinator] And we're getting a picture on the TV.

- [Ian] On July 20, 1969, millions of people around the world watch as Neil Armstrong became the first human to step onto the Moon, marking America's victory in the Space Race against the Soviet Union.

(confetti crackles) - [Neil] That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

- [Ian] 50 years later in 2019, another lunar milestone unfolded on TV when China became the first and still only country to land a probe on the far side of the Moon.

- This lunar mission marks a milestone for the nation's space industry.

- In June, China's Chang'e 6 mission went even further, returning samples from the same region that will help scientists understand the evolution of our solar system.

It was a big victory for President Xi Jinping's eternal dream of making China a leading space power, challenging Russian and U.S. dominance.

So are we in a new space race with Beijing?

And if so, who's winning?

China has poured massive resources into its space program in recent years.

In 2013, it completed a robotic Moon landing; 2020, sent a rover to Mars; and in 2022, it built its space station Tiangong after they were banned from the ISS.

Meanwhile, the United States has been building up its commercial space industry as private companies have lowered the cost of missions with innovations like reusable rockets, which are pretty cool.

In 2026, NASA will partner with SpaceX for the Artemis III mission, which plans to send humans to the lunar south pole, where water has been detected.

But China's space program is just getting started and has a goal of sending astronauts to the Moon by 2030 and building a lunar base with Russia by 2035.

And U.S. officials worry that China's space program is more directly tied to its military than it's letting on.

- We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program.

And I think, in effect, we are in a race.

- [Ian] The 1967 UN Space Treaty bans nuclear weapons in space, seems sensible, and says no country can own the Moon, but it doesn't prohibit military activity there.

Beijing has tripled the number of its spy satellites in orbit in the last six years.

And U.S. officials are raising alarms over China's development of counter-space weapons, like anti-satellite missiles.

Despite the tensions, both nations have some common interest.

Intelligence experts say Russia is developing a nuclear weapon for low Earth orbit.

That's a threat to us and Chinese spacecraft alike.

Leaving aside geopolitics, putting humans back on the Moon is essential for future Mars missions.

Space experts see the Moon as a kind of cosmic gas station serving as a launchpad because of its lower gravitational pull, and, if enough water exists, a source of hydrogen fuel.

(tense drum music) But space travel is hard to rush.

It's dangerous, it's difficult, it's expensive.

See the malfunctioning Boeing Starliner that stranded two NASA astronauts on the space station until at least early 2025.

The more we earthlings know about the unexplored parts of the Moon, the better.

Yet political tensions could hinder the kind of international collaboration that is essential for lunar exploration and beyond.

On the other hand, rivalry also spurs progress.

China's success could push the U.S. to invest more in space exploration.

So maybe it's the perception of competition that will bring the U.S. space program into a new era of discovery.

(crowd cheers) The stakes are outta this world.

My guest today is someone who knows that better than most.

The only person in Congress who's actually spent time in space, heck, and lived to tell about it.

Former astronaut and current senator from Arizona Mark Kelly.

We'll get into the space race, private space industry, and the future of U.S. space policy.

Here's our conversation.

Senator Mark Kelly, thanks so much for being on.

- It's great to be on.

Thank you for the invitation.

- You are an astronaut, or have been historically.

- I was.

- Can I still call you an astronaut?

Is that okay?

- You can call me pretty much anything except Scott, which is my twin brother's name.

- Who also has been an astronaut.

- Who was an astronaut as well.

We each flew in space four times.

I flew four times as the pilot or the commander of the Space Shuttle.

My brother flew two missions on the Space Shuttle, once as a pilot, once as a commander of the Space Shuttle.

- [Ian] This is your identical twin brother.

- [Mark] My identical twin, and then he flew up to the International Space Station on the Soyuz, the Russian rocket and spacecraft.

And he ultimately spent a year in space.

- So he took the Soyuz up.

I mean, is that better or worse than taking a Boeing rocket up these days?

- Well, I'm not gonna comment on our good friends from Boeing.

They've had some challenging times.

I flew on the Space Shuttle, which in my view, I spent 15 years at NASA.

Space Shuttle is by far the best spaceship ever built by any country.

Without the Space Shuttle, we would not have been able to build the International Space Station, which is the size of a football field, weighs a million pounds.

It's now a national laboratory and has provided, I think, a great return on the investment, but you could not do that without the Space Shuttle.

- Fair enough.

- Having said that, Space Shuttle was very expensive to design, to build, and then to operate.

What we've done over the last decade or so since I left NASA was we've transitioned to a commercial cargo and commercial crew program that has brought the cost down dramatically, saving billions and billions of dollars to the American taxpayer and giving us the ability to get to not only low Earth orbit but higher at a much reduced cost.

- International Space Station.

Enormously exciting that we have that platform, and that, around the world, we have astronauts that are working together there.

They're in the news because Elon Musk has been asked to put together something that will allow it to be taken out of orbit and destroyed.

It's towards the end of its natural lifespan?

- Well, it's already beyond what we had planned.

We've had crew members onboard since 1998.

First crew member was Bill Shepherd and a Russian, and we have crew members on board today.

We weren't planning to operate this continuously forever.

And it's beyond its original life.

And today, it takes more crew time to maintain it than it used to.

That number's only gonna increase.

And if we want to do things beyond lower Earth orbit, like go back to the Moon and go on to Mars one day, we need the money.

NASA has a limited budget, so we can't do both.

We can't operate the space station continuously and go back to the Moon and go on to Mars.

So we're gonna retire the space station at some point, and we need somebody to build a deorbit vehicle.

Because you just don't wanna let the orbit decay over time.

- You don't want this to be Skylab.

- Yeah, it would come in uncontrolled.

It weighs over a million pounds.

Big pieces would hit the ground.

We need to make sure that it safely goes to the spaceship graveyard that we have in a certain part of the Pacific Ocean.

- The ocean, yeah.

- So we'll do that in around 2030 or so.

- How does the space race look different today than you might've expected 5-10 years ago?

Again, I know that the private sector's incredibly involved in driving a lot of what we're doing.

Also, of course, the Chinese, I mean, just- - That would be the big part.

I would say China's engagement in space, they now have a small space station.

They've got crew members in orbit now.

They just returned a sample from the back side of the Moon.

- The back side of the Moon, which no one's done before.

- Nobody's done, yeah, and it's hard to do.

- Were we surprised?

Were we surprised by them?

- No, we knew it was coming, but it's something we haven't tried to do.

We are certainly capable of doing it, but it's challenging and you gotta give 'em credit.

I mean, they did something successful that we haven't done before.

We're way ahead of China in any space endeavor.

We need to make sure we stay ahead.

So now I would say our competition is now more China-focused than it was in the 1960s with the Soviet Union.

Russia has spent a lot of time and effort in the militarization of space.

China's doing the same thing.

I sit on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee.

A big concern of mine is, how is the space domain gonna be used in any future conflict?

And there are challenges we face.

Chinese develop capability, and we keep track of that.

We've gotta make sure that we can counter their capability, but also, to the extent that we can, prevent them from using space as a domain in any future conflict.

- How far behind the Americans are the Chinese?

Do we have a decent sense of that at this point?

- Well, they've got a goal of putting somebody on the surface of the Moon.

I expect we'll be successful with Artemis III, which is the second crewed flight to the Moon that we're working on these right now.

We had Artemis I a couple years ago, went around the Moon uncrewed.

- [Ian] Unmanned, yeah.

- Artemis II hopefully will happen next year, sending a crew of four around the Moon.

And then Artemis III down to the surface of the Moon.

I expect we'll be ahead of the Chinese.

I don't feel like we're really in a race with them.

What I'm generally more concerned about is some of the very, say, irresponsible actions that they've taken, not just recently, but in the past.

When I was the commander of Space Shuttle Discovery in 2008, the Chinese had shot down one of their own satellites with an anti-satellite capability that they had developed.

- To show that they could.

- To show that they could do it, and to test that they were able to do it, for them to have some confidence in being able to do that.

It created a big debris field.

Then later, when I was in orbit at the space station, we had a maneuver to get out of the way of a piece of Chinese space junk from that test.

- I mean, there has been some cooperation, right?

I mean, in the sense that, I mean, first of all- - Oh, with the Russians.

- With the Russians.

Also, I mean, in terms of we have no militarization of the Moon.

Nobody gets to have sort of any claims on it, just like Antarctica, right?

I mean, what, do you see- - So far on the Moon.

- So far, so far.

- Yeah, I mean, we've seen- - And so far in Antarctica, which could also change in short order, right?

- Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, yeah, and I wouldn't put anything past the Russians or the Chinese with regards to their not complying with the Treaty.

Let's say, 1967, I think it was the Outer Space Treaty said we're not gonna use the Moon for military purposes and nobody owns the Moon.

I wouldn't put it past our adversaries to change their minds.

- But how much should we be trying to lean into science and the final frontier to facilitate international friendship in areas where, let's face it, there aren't many of them right now.

- Well, we did that with the Russians starting in the 1990s.

Well, actually before that with Apollo-Soyuz, but then with the International Space Station in the 1990s, hey, every space flight I went on, all four of 'em up to the space station, sometimes I had Russian crew members onboard the Space Shuttle with me, but there were always Russians onboard the space station every flight.

And that cooperation worked really well.

We got along in space, teams got along on the ground.

This tried to help further a good relationship between our two countries.

Unfortunately, what Putin did in Ukraine is, I'd say, indicative of, well, did that even matter?

I mean, he attacked one of our allies illegally, murdering women, children, old people, intentionally, by the way, committing war crimes.

- [Ian] They are targeting civilians.

- So, yeah, I'm a little, become a little skeptical of, I mean, did we get the results we want?

Clearly we did not.

(soldiers speaking in a foreign language) - But I would say just in general, when we can find ways to cooperate with other countries, especially if it benefits us, and if we could share the cost, certainly with our European partners, with Canada, with Japan, having them as partners in this endeavor has been a huge success for us.

They can share some of the burden of the costs.

We can help them become spacefaring nations.

That part has been a really big success.

- So get a little closer to Earth.

Talk about low Earth orbit.

I mean, I see there's an area where the Americans are doing an incredible job, but a lot of it is dominated by the private sector.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Which is good.

- Which is good if the American government is aligned with those companies.

- Sure, which is not always the case.

- Which is not the case.

- So, I mean, there's been a lot of stories, right, about the fact that during the war in Ukraine, as you just mentioned, that Starlink decisions on Starlink's operability was being made by their corporate headquarters, not necessarily in alignment with what the U.S. or Ukraine would want.

How can the Americans deal with that going forward?

- Let me start with saying Starlink has been a tremendous increase in capability, not only for the Ukrainians, I mean, to help them in this war against Russia.

I mean, it's really been a huge advantage.

And without it, they would be in a different place than they are today.

It's also helped us.

And it's something that we're gonna continue to work with SpaceX and Starlink on further developing that capability.

I'd say in the beginning there were some challenges.

I mean, how do you prevent another country from getting access to the dishes and the terminals?

And they do it through unsanctioned methods.

I wouldn't say they're necessarily illegal.

They're buying a private product, and they're shipping it to Russia and they're using it.

That's been a challenge.

And I've talked to Elon Musk about this, and they have responded, I think, in a very positive way to do what they can to prevent the Russian government, the Russian military from using Starlink.

Not always successful, but they're doing what they can to mitigate the effects.

- What would you say about Taiwan?

A place, again, aligned with the United States, U.S. provides a lot of military support.

If they don't have fiber capabilities linking them up, then they need communications.

- Right.

- And whether or not that would be provided by Starlink would be an open question.

Should these technologies be fundamentally aligned with, controlled by, the U.S. government, or is it okay to have some of them fundamentally deciding?

- Well, I would hope that U.S. companies would be making decisions that are in certainly in the best interest of the company and their shareholders, but also leaning into the fact that these are U.S. companies, and there should be some level of patriotism there, and aligning with us and our values.

Our adversaries don't have the same ethical and moral compass.

And I hope that companies, all companies here in the United States would recognize that.

Taiwan, yeah, obviously in a challenging situation.

At times, I hope, one of my goals sitting on the Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee is to make sure that we don't get into conflict with China.

We don't want that, I don't think they want it.

That's gonna be a situation where none of us win.

I also think the best way for us to stay out of that kind of conflict is to make sure that the Chinese realize that they're not gonna win.

- Even closer to Earth, that balloon that was transiting.

- The Chinese balloon, right.

- Alaska, Canada, the United States, eventually knocked down by the U.S. Hotline was attempted to be used, the Chinese didn't pick up.

- Yeah, they often don't.

- Tell me a little bit about how you thought about that and responded to it when it was happening.

- Well, I mean, it's like any other ISR asset, in this case, much closer to home and much more provocative, right?

They did that for a reason.

There was some collection that they received from that balloon that they would not have been otherwise be able to get from something in LEO or high Earth.

That's why they did it.

And we shot it down, and then we shot down another one.

And we can't get in the habit of shooting down every balloon that flies over the United States.

I mean, it's gonna get very expensive very quickly.

So I've got some legislation, bipartisan legislation to make sure that at least the balloons that we're launching here from the continental United States and flying over U.S. territory has a transponder on it.

Very simple.

So NORAD could say, "Hey, we don't need to focus on that one, and we don't need to focus on that one.

That's a university, that's a company somewhere, U.S.

company."

We don't need to focus on that.

We need to focus on the ones that we really have no information on.

- [Ian] Do we think that the Chinese got that message?

I mean, in terms of.

- I think they did.

- Because there's certainly been a much greater level of military-to-military communication between the U.S. and China.

Or so it has said.

- Well also, you see, I mean, they haven't flown a high-altitude balloon over the United States since we shot that one down.

- Yeah.

Let me ask a little bit of a silly question, which is, I've seen a number of folks in respected media respond pretty alarmist to the UFO testimony.

And so I am sure that you found that amusing.

Why, I mean, you're gonna see conspiracy theory there, of course, but why is there so much excitement about this supposed intelligence?

- Well, I mean, our galaxy's a big place.

The universe is 2 trillion galaxies, and we've got hundreds of billions of stars and planets in our own.

And it's something people often think about: is there life out there somewhere else?

What is that life like?

Does that life visit here?

Does it visit Earth?

I get these questions all the time.

People think as I've been to space, maybe I have this special insight, or maybe I've seen something while I've spent time orbiting the Earth, and I haven't.

I don't think we've got visitors from other places.

Having said that, I've seen some compelling testimony from Navy fighter pilots who, often, in one case, in a position of leadership in a squadron, that's seen something very compelling.

It's our obligation on the Armed Services Committee- - Something compelling, something that he is convinced is technologically not possible by the U.S. or adversaries with the state of their- - In one case, that is true.

- Yeah, and what do you think about that?

- Well, I think it's our responsibility to look into it and put some more resources behind studying these phenomenon.

We don't call 'em UFOs anymore, we call 'em UAPs.

We changed the name.

- Unidentified aerial- - Phenomenon.

- Phenomenon.

Okay, fair enough.

- Yeah, so yeah, it's the same thing.

- That should make it easier.

- It's a UFO.

- Yeah.

- It's basically the- - And is the answer we don't know?

At this point, we haven't devoted enough resource to be credible in a response to that.

- Well, I don't know if it's a resource issue.

It's like that, but I think it's fair to say we don't know.

- Interesting.

Interesting.

Senator Mark Kelly, thanks so much for joining us.

- It's been great to talk to you.

Thank you.

(bright electronic music) - And now we leave the cosmos and float back down to Earth to check in with our little friends.

It's time for "Puppet Regime."

Roll that tape.

- There has been much speculation about Donald Trump's claim that he could end the war in Ukraine in one day if he were elected president.

Well, now a leaked conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin explains it all - Okay, you gotta cut this crap out now, Vladimir.

It's gonna start to make me look bad.

Plus the less things J. D. Vance has to talk about, the better, frankly.

- Fine, I'll stop war where it is now, but what do I get for it?

- You mean like in addition to half of Ukraine or whatever?

- Yes, in addition to like that or whatever.

- I thought you might play hardball, Vladimir, so I have a deal for you, something beautiful.

Some might say it's pie in the sky, but.

- Tell me more.

- Your very own sphere of influence.

- Uh-huh.

- The true satellite state you've been missing for so long.

- Interesting.

I'm listening.

- No, you should be looking, looking out the window and up into the night sky.

(stirring orchestral music) (Vladimir gasps) - [Vladimir] No way.

- [Donald] Way, I always said I'd offer you the moon one day, Vladimir.

- Donald, you shouldn't have.

- No, I really shouldn't have.

You know, Jared is gonna be very upset about losing the real estate potential, but.

- But wait, Donald, you don't actually own Moon.

- What am I, a gift horse?

You don't actually own Ukraine, Vladimir, but that's not stopping us here, is it?

♪ Puppet Regime ♪ (triumphant orchestral music) - That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you see, or even if you don't, but you've got kids that want to be astronauts, who doesn't, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com.

(lively jazz music) (lively jazz music continues) (lively jazz music continues) (bright electronic music) - [Announcer 1] Funding for "GZERO World" is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis, - [Announcer 2] Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint (uplifting orchestral music) and scale their supply chains with a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at prologis.com - [Announcer 1] And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support "GZERO."

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Jerre and Mary Joy Stead, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and.

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