“What would it mean if China were to put humans back on the moon first?” Bill Whitaker asks Scott Pace, who helped NASA develop the Artemis program. “It would be massively embarrassing,” Pace replies. However, Pace says establishing a sustained presence on the moon matters more than getting back to the lunar surface first. “Who sets the rules for the space domain, who is there permanently, that’s a story for the next century,” he adds. | 60 Minutes

China has cemented its place in the elite group of nations mastering high-precision lunar navigation. In April 2025, a research team led by the Yunnan Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) achieved a historic milestone by successfully conducting the world’s first daylight satellite laser ranging (SLR) in Earth-Moon space. By targeting the Tiandu-1 satellite—a 61kg technology demonstrator orbiting approximately 130,000 kilometers away—scientists captured a clear return signal des

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