Pence Calls for Putting Americans Back on Moon by 2024

Vice President Mike Pence waves from Air Force Two as he arrives in Huntsville to chair the fifth National Space Council meeting held at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., on March 26, 2019. Eric Schultz/AP Photo

Vice President Mike Pence announced on Tuesday, March 26, an accelerated goal of putting Americans back on the moon within five years “by any means necessary,” and NASA’s top official immediately embraced the challenge.

Pence, chairing a meeting of the National Space Council at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, borrowed from the vocabulary of the Cold War era in declaring, “We’re in a space race today, just as we were in the 1960s.”