On a crisp evening in December 2023, I received an urgent alert: a swarm of unidentified drones had been detected above Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, inside highly restricted airspace. As NASA administrator at the time, I was immediately concerned. Langley is one of the most sensitive sites in the United States — home to F-22 Raptors, supersonic stealth fighters with highly classified capabilities and NORAD operations. It also happens to neighbor NASA’s Langley Research Center, where our experimental technology had spotted the drones.
Isolated drone sightings around military bases weren’t unheard-of, but nothing like this swarm had ever happened before. I called senior Pentagon officials twice and raised the issue with staff at the National Security Council. I noted it was NASA technology that was able to see the drones, and based on our observations, this activity wasn’t random: It’s plausible the drones launched from a ship or submarine lurking as little as three miles offshore in international waters, or perhaps from trucks or trailers concealed in nearby woodlands.
The incursion by the drones lasted 17 days. To my knowledge, we still do not know their origin or purpose, or how much of a threat they posed. But it was thanks to NASA technology that they were even picked up in the first place. The Air Force base did not have that capability.
If a drone incursion could do something like this at Langley, what would stop a determined adversary from launching a flock of spacecraft-downing drones at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station? Or Vandenberg Space Force Base in California? Or Wallops Island off Virginia? These aren’t just sites for launching rockets into space and delivering NASA payloads into orbit — they’re strategic targets vital to the defense of our homeland.
The events at Langley underscore how although NASA is a civilian agency for space exploration, its role stretches beyond that. Its study of the environment of space makes it possible for the United States to launch and operate satellites vital for spotting unusual things that NASA calls “anomalies” and allowing communications across the globe. Its technological advancements have made it possible to develop state-of-the-art rockets and aircraft that few other countries can match.
Winning the race to the moon bolstered national prestige and geopolitical dominance that helped the United States win the Cold War. NASA’s fleet of Earth observation satellites gives vulnerable communities the information they need to plan for an uncertain future under climate change. And its scientific research into the furthest reaches of the solar system and beyond opens our eyes to the awesome nature of the universe, reminding us of our shared humanity.
The Trump administration’s proposal to cut NASA to the bone — including a nearly 50 percent reduction in science funding — jeopardizes the country’s pursuit of discovery and undermines capabilities that are essential in an era when rivals are advancing in terrestrial and extraterrestrial arenas. Far from a bold vision for American leadership, the administration has presented Congress with a blueprint for falling catastrophically behind on space exploration just as China and other nations are surging ahead.
The contest to return to the moon and become the first country to land boots on Mars and beyond is a perfect example. It is in the world’s interest to keep extraterrestrial worlds peaceful, and the best way to do so is to ensure America and its allies get there first and establish a permanent foothold before our adversaries do.
This requires supporting the kind of research on the International Space Station that helps us understand how to protect human health during long periods in low gravity. Ice reserves on the moon can be harvested to provide oxygen, water and rocket fuel to people living on the moon, but we need to send probes and landers that map out these deposits and tell us the best location to build an outpost.
We need to study the radiation that emanates through space so we can develop ways to protect future astronauts. We need to test experimental technologies like nuclear thermal and nuclear electric propulsion that could allow us to travel through space faster and more efficiently. All of this research is threatened by cuts to NASA’s funding, making the return to the moon and the leap to Mars more difficult.
If China wins the new space race by getting humans back to the moon before us, establishing the first footholds on Mars and dominating the strategic high ground of space, then the technologies that shape our daily lives, the networks that power our economies and the satellites that safeguard our troops and monitor our climate will no longer be anchored in an open and democratic framework. They’ll be used as leverage in a century-defining competition, perhaps even involving nuclear weapons in space.
But this isn’t just about the race to shape humanity’s future as a multiplanetary species. It’s about threats that are already here, as we witnessed over a year ago at Langley. In places like Ukraine and the Middle East, we’re witnessing the dawn of autonomous drone strikes as a new paradigm of war — launched from hidden compartments, capable of punching through even the most sophisticated air defenses. Against this backdrop are reports of Chinese-owned companies purchasing farmland near U.S. military bases — at least 350,000 acres in 27 states — raising urgent questions about espionage and threats not just to military installations, but also critical systems like energy grids. A strong civilian space program doesn’t just advance technologies needed to detect these threats, but also helps ensure supremacy over the skies and in orbit.
Space is now a battleground — shadowed by rising foes and emerging private powers, more contested and more volatile than at any point since humankind first broke free of Earth’s gravity. The next giant leap is not about planting flags and leaving footprints; it’s about who will define the future and write the rules.
The choice before us is stark: cut support to NASA and shrink from the unknown, or step boldly toward it and champion the agency to take us there.
Bill Nelson was the 14th administrator of NASA and is a former Democratic senator from Florida. He flew on the 24th flight of the space shuttle in January 1986.
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