Move Over, Neil Armstrong

Today, India launched its first mission to the moon, marking a landmark in the history of space exploration. The unmanned Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft blasted off from southern India on a reconnaissance mission that will last two years. The Indian rocketship follows in the wake of Colonel Zhai Zhigang, the first Chinese astronaut to conduct an independent spacewalk last month. These days, it seems like all of the BRIC nations are eying the skies (even while the world copes with falling markets and widespread economic fragility). Two years ago, Brazil sent Marcos Cesar Pontes to the International Space Station and the country continues to lobby for the title of South America’s most space-oriented nation. This month Russia, a veteran of the high skies, promised to reinvest 200 billion roubles in the future of space exploration. Flexing its economic might, China continues to market its technology to other nations aiming for the heavens. The playing field is changing.

On the home front, the US space program remains bogged down in more domestic challenges, so much so that earlier this week NASA officials released a new code of conduct for its employees. Following the highly-publicized Nowak-gate incident and reports of boozing astronauts taking to the skies, NASA realized the urgent need to enforce stricter personal and professional standards in the workplace. Today, NASA must step up its game in order to compete with new actors in an increasingly congested stratosphere. India’s moon mission only underscores this and the overarching shifting balance of power in today’s globalized world.