The US are no longer just eyeing up taking over countries - but the Moon too

The US has made headlines over President Trump's previous threats to take over Greenland, and the US intervention in Venezuela, more recently, Cuba takeover threats, and then there's the war with Iran...

But all of this hasn't stopped the White House from making clear its big ambitions for the US's presence on the Moon.

It comes as the Artemis II launch date draws closer, where NASA is sending humans back to the Moon for the first time in 50 years on April 1 after previous delays in February and March.

Among the astronauts being sent up for the 10-day trip around the moon are NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency's Jeremy Hansen.

As mentioned, the crew will not be landing on the moon, but rather it will be a free-return trajectory around the Moon and back to Earth.

Now the White House has set out the US's ultimate goal for Americans to "stay" on the Moon, as they stated in an ominous social media post.

"The goal is not just to reach the Moon, but to stay," they wrote on X, in response to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman's post detailing how this goal will be achieved.

"To return Americans to the Moon, NASA is shifting to an iterative, execution-focused approach – just as we did during Apollo," he wrote.

"We are standardizing rocket architecture, embedding NASA expertise across industry, and increasing launch cadence to support sustained lunar operations.

"We are sending a demand signal for crewed missions beyond Artemis V, with at least two providers capable of bringing astronauts to the surface every 6 months."

Isaacman concluded, "The goal is not just to reach the Moon, but to stay.

"America will never give up the Moon again."

Looking ahead, the year 2028 is when Artemis IV is scheduled to launch, which will mark the third crewed mission and first lunar landing.

"Artemis IV will be one of the most complex undertakings of engineering and human ingenuity in the history of deep space exploration, exploring the lunar South Pole region. The astronauts’ observations, samples, and data collected will expand our understanding of our solar system and home planet, while inspiring the Artemis Generation," according to NASA.

In terms of building a permanent base, NASA has outlined it's three step plan where they will initially send rovers, instruments with the purpose to "advance mobility, power generation, communications, navigation, surface operations, and a wide range of scientific investigations."

From this, they will then implement semi-permanent infrastructure and regular logistics, and then the final phase will see a move towards providing the long term infrastrcuture need for a "continuous human foothold on the Moon."

Elsewhere from Indy100, NASA makes statement on giant asteroid heading towards the Moon, and Moon mystery uncovered by lunar rocks collected by astronauts.

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