Opinion

PETER NAVARRO: Trump's Artemis vision is now flying — and China is paying attention

Artemis is not just exploration; it is strategic theater, alliance management and rule-setting in real time

By Peter Navarro Fox News

Published April 10, 2026 9:00pm EDT | Updated April 10, 2026 9:11pm EDT

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Artemis II crew splashes down on California coast after historic moon trip

Artemis II mission crew members successfully return to Earth after a 10-day trip around the moon.

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Now that Artemis II has completed its lunar flyby and returned to Earth, Artemis is no longer a concept or a promise. It is a working American deep space architecture.

In a single mission, the Artemis II crew executed manual piloting and proximity operations, while the Orion spacecraft operated at lunar distance and proved the life support, propulsion, power, thermal, navigation and reentry systems that generated the operational data NASA says will shape the missions that follow.

As we celebrate this achievement, it is worth remembering how this mission began — and why it matters.

ARTEMIS II NEARS END OF HISTORIC MISSION WITH SPLASHDOWN OFF CALIFORNIA COAST

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Early in his first term, Donald Trump saw what no president since Richard Nixon had seen clearly enough: returning to the Moon is not some relic of the last century’s glory days. It is the strategic high ground of this one.

The triumph of Artemis II began on Dec. 11, 2017, with the signing of Space Policy Directive-1. It redirected NASA away from two dead ends.

The first was the Obama-era asteroid pathway, in which NASA planned to retrieve a boulder from a near-Earth asteroid, place it in lunar orbit and send astronauts there as a steppingstone to........

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