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Over 50 years since it last sent astronauts to the moon, the US is now reentering a very different space race

The successful launch of the Artemis II lunar flyby marked one small step for NASA, while China’s already making giant leaps in its own space program.

Millie Giles

4/2/26 11:38AM

On Wednesday, a group of NASA astronauts set off on a flight around the moon, the first crewed lunar flyby since 1972. The world of space travel, much like life on Earth itself, has changed a lot in those 54 years.

The Space Launch System, for example, is considerably more advanced technology than Apollo’s Saturn V rocket; the crew is one person bigger, and includes a Canadian; the pace of launches leading up to it has been much slower; and the mission comes amid a rivalry with an Eastern nation that isn’t Russia.

Red star, blue star

In the days preceding the Artemis II launch, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman commented that one of the main motives for the US to reinitiate its lunar exploration programs is the progress that China has been making in the space.

As outlined by The New York Times, China is the only country so far to have landed on and retrieved samples from the far side of the moon — the same side that the US aims to land human astronauts on by 2028 — with its seventh robotic mission exploring the lunar south pole slated for later this year. For its part, China aims to place its own astronauts on the nearer, Neil Armstrong-trodden side of the moon by 2030.

Right now, China’s astronomical ambitions appear to be slightly leaner than America’s, and are moving at a slower rate. Dr. Yuqi Qian, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong, told the NYT, “I don’t think China regards this as a race.” Still, that hasn’t stopped the US from ramping up its moon mission efforts in recent years.

Data from the NASA archive shows that the US kicked its lunar program back into motion in 2022, when the agency launched six missions in a single year, followed by five further missions in the years since. Russia’s lunar efforts have all but plateaued following the mid-20th-century space race, while China’s have accelerated significantly since it first launched its lunar initiative in 2004.

The lunar the better

Regardless of speed, both the US and China have similar plans once they get to the moon’s surface, including establishing outposts there to tap oxygen, water, hydrogen, helium, and rare earth elements and building nuclear reactors to power deep space missions.

Until then, wherever you are in the world, at least we can all find some strange comfort in the fact that there are officially 10 toilets in space right now (though this will go back down when Artemis II lands in nine days).

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Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

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FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

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Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Street’s most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to “neutral” from “underweight” and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla “is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore “deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential” rather than near-term speed bumps.
Unmatched vertical integration: Tesla’s control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is “unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.”
The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories “should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.”

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

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