ALBUQUERQUE — Harrison Jack Schmitt, the last living scientist to walk on the moon, provided a strategic assessment of the future of lunar exploration on April 24, 2026. His remarks followed the April 10 splashdown of NASA’s Artemis II mission, which saw the first crewed spacecraft orbit the moon in over five decades. Schmitt, who served as a lunar module pilot for Apollo 17 in 1972 and later as a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, asserted that the current era of spaceflight must transition from demonstration to the establishment of a permanent industrial and scientific base.
The Artemis II mission, crewed by Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, and Mission Specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, completed a 10-day journey that reached a record-breaking distance of 252,756 miles from Earth. Schmitt noted that the success of the Orion spacecraft, which the crew named Integrity, validates the life-support and thermal protection systems required for long-duration stays. However, he cautioned that the United States faces intensifying competition from the International Lunar Research Station, a joint project between China and Russia.
A central component of Schmitt’s vision is the extraction of Helium-3, a rare isotope deposited in the lunar regolith by solar winds. As the executive chairman of Interlune, a company focused on lunar resource acquisition, Schmitt has long advocated for Helium-3 as a clean fuel for future nuclear fusion reactors. He stated that China’s explicit interest in lunar mining poses a significant geopolitical challenge, suggesting that the nation that first masters lunar resource processing will dominate global energy production for the next century.
The geopolitical landscape is currently defined by the Artemis Accords, a set of principles for peaceful space exploration now signed by more than 40 nations. While the U.S. maintains a lead in deep-space crewed operations, NASA recently adjusted the timeline for Artemis III. On April 20, 2026, the agency rolled out the core stage of the Space Launch System for Artemis III, which is now slated for a 2027 launch. This mission has been revised from a lunar landing to a high-altitude docking test in Earth orbit to evaluate the Human Landing Systems being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin.
Schmitt emphasized that the moon is a history book of the solar system, containing geological data that could explain the origin of life and the evolution of the sun. He argued that the next phase of the Artemis program must prioritize field geology and the deployment of a lunar base to support missions to Mars. By utilizing lunar water ice for hydrogen fuel and oxygen, NASA can reduce the mass requirements for deep-space transit, a strategy Schmitt believes is essential for the long-term viability of human spaceflight.