(NewsNation) — China’s recent moon mission that retrieved rock samples from the dark side of the moon may be raising red flags over a future territorial fight in space.

“China has made extraordinary strides, especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told a House panel in June. “We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. And I think, in effect, we are in a race,” Nelson added.

He said should China make it to the moon by 2030 and establish a permanent base by 2035, it may try to claim some of the moon as its own.

But calling it a “race” may be overstating things, according to veteran space reporter John Zarella.

“China is extremely methodical in everything it does,” he told “NewsNation Prime.” He noted that any race to the moon, for now, is a race to find the one thing that will determine whether any country can operate a long-term facility on the moon: Water.

“That’s where you’d want to be – where there would potentially be water.”

The question of whether China might find water (in ice form) and then control it, is premature, according to Zarella.

“The question is: how much (water) is really there?”

Still, China’s successful rock retrieval mission puts pressure on NASA to step it up. This year, NASA contracted two U.S. companies to work on lunar surface missions, but both failed due to technical errors.

NASA’s Artemis exploration plan focuses on multiple future moon landings, but the project has faced repeated delays after Artemis-1 successful uncrewed test mission around the moon in 2022.

The next two test flights have been pushed back including Artemis-3, which NASA hopes to be humanity’s first crewed landing to the lunar surface since Apollo 17 and 1972.