In the past five years alone, China has launched Tiangong, a modern orbital laboratory to rival the aging, US-led International Space Station. Both the United States and China plan to send robotic explorers to the south pole later this year, paving the way for human explorers to follow close behind. “The pace of human space exploration is endless,” Xi said in a 2020 speech. But there is “inherent difficulty squaring the circle,” Swope said, when it comes to allowing countries or companies to extract lunar resources. This cooperation culminated in the International Space Station, which the US and Russia still jointly operate.