NASA administrator Bill Nelson said recently that it is important for the United States to return to the moon before China stakes its claim.

During an interview, NPR’s Scott Detrow questioned him about recent speeches wherein Nelson kept coming back to the subject of China, the outlet reported Monday.

Detrow asked why it mattered so much to him that America beats China in returning to the moon.

This 20 July 1969 file photo released by NASA shows astronaut Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. saluting the US flag on the surface of the Moon during the Apollo 11 lunar mission (NASA/AFP/Getty Images).

In answer to his question, Nelson said:

First of all, I don’t give a lot of speeches about China, but people ask a lot of questions about China. And it’s important simply because, I know what China has done on the face of the Earth, for example, where the Spratly Islands, they suddenly take over a part of the South China Sea and say, “this is ours, you stay out.”

I don’t want them to get to the South Pole, which is a limited area where we think the water is. It’s pockmarked with craters. And so there are limited areas that you can land on the South Pole. I don’t want them to get there and say, “this is ours. You stay out.”

It ought to be for the international community, for scientific research. So that’s why I think it’s important for us to get there first.

In 2022, Nelson said China is “very nontransparent” and it did not want to share with anyone else despite the fact that he had “given them plenty of opportunities.”

This picture released on January 11, 2019, by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) via CNS shows the Chang’e-4 lunar probe, taken by the Yutu-2 moon rover, on the far side of the moon (Photo by – / China National Space Administration (CNSA) via CNS / AFP/Getty Images).

“I’ve talked to their ambassador and said, ‘You’ve returned a sample from the moon. We shared that with the international community a half-century ago. Why don’t you share it?’ Not doing it. So the long and short of it is the value we think of the moon is the South Pole. That’s where we think water is, and if you have water, you have rocket fuel,” he added.

On Friday, the communist country launched a probe to gather samples from the far side of the moon, AFP reported, noting that Beijing has been working on a program to send crew members on a lunar mission in the next few years.

However, “Washington has warned that the programme is being used to mask military objectives and an effort to establish dominance in space,” the article said.

In March, Breitbart News reported that Russian space agency Roscosmos said it was “seriously considering” erecting a nuclear power plant on the moon and joining forces with China to make it happen.

“Russia has distanced its space development from America and the greater West in recent years in response to mounting sanctions meant to deter its ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine,” the report stated.