Once settled with power and communication flowing, the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience will lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface.
Democrats have dismissed the effort as a distraction.“Chairman Comer had his big shot in the last Congress to impeach Joe Biden and it was, of course, a spectacular flop,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as the ranking member on the oversight committee in the previous Congress. “And now he’s just living off of a spent dream. It’s over. And he should give up the whole thing.”
Republicans on the committee are eager to pursue the investigation.“The American people didn’t elect a bureaucracy to run the country,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, a freshman Republican from Texas. “I think that the American people deserve to know the truth and they want to know the truth of what happened.”The Republican inquiry so far has focused on the final executive actions of Biden’s administration, which included the issuing of new federal rules and presidential pardons that they claim may be invalid.
Comer cited the book “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”
Biden and members of his family have vigorously denied the book’s claims.
“This book is political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class,” said Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter.Fix noted that ispace, like other businesses, does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures. While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it’s less than the first one which exceeded $100 million.
Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year’s end: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic’s first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth’s atmosphere.For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972.
NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX’s Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.