The US is spending over $20 billion to plant a permanent, nuclear-powered base on the Moon's south pole — good for American space companies, bad for the idea that the Moon stays neutral ground.

• NASA's three-stage plan runs through 2032 and would ring Shackleton Crater with a claimed zone bigger than some countries.
• The prize is water — an estimated 100 million tons of ice frozen in the crater's permanent darkness, enough to keep a base alive and fuel trips to Mars.
• Blue Origin, Astrobotic, and Intuitive Machines get the big contracts, with landers, rovers, and autonomous drones arriving before any astronauts do.
• Solar power fails through the 14-day lunar night, so the base would run on an experimental nuclear reactor built with the Energy Department — if it quits, people freeze within hours.
• China and Russia are building a rival base aimed at the same south pole, and neither signed the US-led Artemis Accords.

Outlook: Astronauts are penciled in for 2028, but many experts call the timeline rushed, and a slip would hand China and Russia the chance to stake the best ground first.