America is Going Back to the Moon!
Published: March 18, 2026
Analysis: The Conservative Caucus
Watch American Astronauts Orbit the Moon!
America has taken the first big step to sending astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972.
On January 17, at the Kennedy Space Center, the giant Artemis-II rocket moved 4.2 miles from the ‘Vehicle Assembly Building’ to the launch pad. The voyage took over twelve hours, riding on the same immense mobile platform used for the historic Apollo missions.
After some maintenance, the rocket was again rolled out to the pad, where it is today.
The launch ‘window’ to the Moon is tentatively scheduled for April 1, and extending through the 6th. Another set of launch dates starts on April 30 and for several days in early May. Launches of course depend on good weather and technical readiness.
Several launch dates will be in the evening during daylight: April 1, 2 and 30. The other dates will be after dark.
During the move, the NASA Administrator, Jared Isaacman and the four astronauts took questions. Isaacman promised this will not be only a few missions to the Moon.
“We ended our last exploration of the moon at Apollo 17. Now I hope someday my kids are going to be watching the 100th Artemis mission. We’re talking about a lot of repeated missions, crew members and cargo going to and from the lunar environment.”
— NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
“We are doing this to fulfill a promise to the American people that we will return to the moon. A promise to all of the pioneers, the engineers, the scientists, the astronauts, the researchers from the 1960s who laid the foundation that we are standing upon right now.
We’ll do it inevitably to figure out the orbital and lunar economy for all of the science and discovery possibilities that are out there to inspire my kids, your kids, kids all around the world to want to grow up and contribute to this unbelievable endeavor that we’re on right now.”
Mission Specialist Christina Koch is an engineer who holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman; 328 days on the International Space Station (ISS). Koch spoke about the importance of discovery and the knowledge that they will bring back to Earth.
“We have both lunar geology, and human research on this mission. How we can learn behavioral health and immune response in space, fascinating physiological response that humans have in microgravity and there’s a really neat new type of technology we will be testing to mimic how our cells and bones will respond to microgravity and the radiation environment.”
— Mission Specialist Christina Koch
The other crew members include the mission commander, Reid Wiseman. He’s a veteran astronaut who flew to the ISS in 2014 and was the former chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office. This is his second spaceflight.
Victor Glover is the Pilot on the mission. A Naval aviator and test pilot, he flew on the first SpaceX crewed flight to the space station in 2020. This will be his second spaceflight.
Jeremy Hansen is a Mission Specialist from the Canadian Space Agency. He was a fighter pilot and was selected as a CSA astronaut in 2009. This will be his first spaceflight.
The Stolen Future
The return to the Moon since Apollo is the story of a future stolen by greedy politicians. The original plans were to build a permanent American base on the Moon in the 1970s and then go to Mars in the 1980s. In that future, kids would have pointed at the city lights on the Moon and exclaimed, “Mommy, there’s people up there!”
But following the Apollo 11 landing in 1969, liberal politicians circled like sharks to get the funds for their pork barrel projects and more welfare.
At a Congressional hearing on building the space station, then-Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) angrily demanded, “Can you give me one reason this money shouldn’t be used to feed the poor?”
Few politicians retained the vision that President John F. Kennedy had when he inspired the nation.
President George W. Bush resurrected the plans to return to the Moon in 2004. But it was slow-walked, allowing anti-American-exceptionalism President Obama to kill it entirely in 2010.
During the Obama years, mere mention of the word ‘moon’ was essentially forbidden. It was so policed, that a contractor’s award announcement was ordered ‘cancelled’ unless he removed an exhibit showing an image of the moon.
President Trump believes in American exceptionalism and restoring our leadership in space exploration. And beating China.
In his first term, Trump immediately restarted the lunar program. But Obama’s damage set us back too far, allowing Communist China to catch up. Now it’s a race against China’s stated goal to claim both the Moon and Mars as their territory.
In 2017, the head of China’s military-led lunar program, Ye Pei-Jian, declared that “The universe is the ocean: the Moon is the Diaoyu Islands and Mars is Huangyan Island.”
Those are China’s names for the islands in the East and South China Seas that dictator Xi Jinping militarized in violation of 400 years of freedom of the seas, and the Law of the Sea Treaty. This was a specific warning of their goal to similarly conquer outer space.
President Trump doesn’t bow to Chinese threats. Now the first launch of astronauts to the Moon will occur in April.
Countdown
That brings us to the present. The tremendous Space Launch System rocket is ready to launch between April 1 and 6. Both weather and technical issues could delay it by days or weeks.
The three American astronauts and one Canadian will voyage to the Moon in a repeat of the Christmas Eve 1968 orbit of the Moon. That had paved the way for the historic landing on the Moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on July 20, 1969.
Once the Artemis II mission has successfully concluded, the third mission next year will be to Earth orbit to test docking with either or both lunar landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Americans will then land on the surface of the Moon in early 2028 on Artemis-IV, and a second landing on Artemis V in late 2028.
This is critical to prevent the Chinese claim.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are racing to win the contract for the lunar lander spacecraft.
At least one of the Artemis landings will be on the south pole of the Moon. Why? Because there’s actual water ice in ancient craters that never get sunlight. With water, future lunar residents will have oxygen to breathe and water to drink. Oxygen plus hydrogen make up rocket fuel. That’s how we will be able to live on the Moon with less supplies from Earth.
Private investments on the Moon will soar to billions in coming decades. Mining and tourism will lead the market.
In a decade or two, you may be able to travel to earth orbit for the price of a luxury cruise. And perhaps for a few times that amount actually go to the Moon and place your own boot-prints on the surface. Elon Musk plans to make journeys to Mars just as affordable, though that trip would be a much longer journey.
The China Threat
Without a U.S. presence on the Moon, China will deny access to the free world and commercial ventures. They may ‘allow’ some projects under the same rules they used to steal the world’s technology: surrender your tech and build everything in China. And they would prohibit the free world from using their controlled regions or the entirety of the Moon for defensive purposes, while themselves militarizing the Moon.
Thank goodness for President Trump—he would tell the Chinese to shut up. But a future Democrat president could bow to Beijing and end a bold future of commerce, discovery, defense of our nation from space, and indeed tourism.
The Media Blackout
The liberal media is largely ignoring our return to the Moon. Those who watched the Apollo 11 landing remember how enthusiastic the media was. That inspired millions of kids to go into engineering and related fields, creating decades of U.S. high tech leadership.
Today, the media tends to only cover space when something bad happens, and only briefly then. “If it bleeds, it leads” is their philosophy. Because the liberal media is the avowed enemy of President Trump, their coverage of this launch will be low-key, and probably omit that it is Trump who rescued America’s return to the Moon.
You can help change the media’s near-blackout by posting this on social media. Tell everyone we’re going back to the Moon!
Starting on April 1, check at NASA.gov if it’s going or would be postponed a day or two. Pass the word and watch it with your family. You can watch the exciting launch and journey to the Moon on NASA’s channel, websites and likely on many network broadcasts.
America’s space program is American exceptionalism defined. It’s soft power. It’s protecting access to space and the Moon for the free world and commercial space. It’s perhaps the only government program that returns technological benefits to the economy far in excess of its cost.
Americans are getting excited about returning to the Moon. Godspeed to astronauts Wiseman, Glover, Koch and Hansen!
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Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.