In a rare public statement, China outlined its detailed plan to land a crew of astronauts on the moon within three years. The recently revealed roadmap offers the most comprehensive look yet at the nation’s lunar ambitions, and lays out the steps it intends to take to get its crew to the moon’s surface as the new space race heats up.
During the 7th Manned Space Symposium in Beijing, Wang Xiang, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program, presented a comprehensive overview of a series of missions leading up to a crew landing on the lunar surface before 2030, reported China’s Global Times.
The plans include a full-scale landing test that will not involve a crew on board, as well as a rendezvous in lunar orbit ahead of China’s first attempt to land astronauts on the moon.
A road map to the moon
To deliver its missions to the Moon, China plans to test in Earth orbit with its Long March 10A, a single-stick variant configured without side boosters. The rocket is initially scheduled to launch the Mengzhou spacecraft to China’s Tiangong space station for cargo missions in early 2027 to collect data and demonstrate its reliability.
The following year, China plans to conduct an unmanned test flight of the larger, three-stage Long March 10 rocket in the Lanyue lunar lander. The unmanned lander will try to land on the moon and take off again.
Lanyue and Mengzhou will then launch on two separate Long March 10 rockets and try to dock in lunar orbit for a full-scale test mission training for 2029. The same orbital rendezvous was used during the Apollo program, except for the Saturn V rocket launching both the Apollo lunar landing module (lander) and the command and service rocket module carried together on space technology (the space-astronaut).
For China, the docking of the lander and the spacecraft would pave the way for an attempt to land astronauts on the moon. The crew is planned to consist of three taikonauts, two of which will be assigned to the lunar surface.
The surface mission is expected to last three Earth days, with the astronauts performing extravehicular activities each day.
The new space race
The four-year sequence, while ambitious, is a significant shift from previously vague timelines issued by Chinese officials about the nation’s lunar plans.
Shortly after Wang’s statement, videos posted on Chinese social media appeared to show preparations for the upcoming test flights at the Wenchang Spaceport, SpaceNews reported. The footage showed large containers holding the hardware for an upcoming trial being lifted from a cargo ship.
China is apparently wasting no time in putting its plan into action as it races with the United States to land astronauts on the moon. NASA aims to land astronauts on the moon in early 2028 as part of Artemis 4.
However, it is still speculated whether the US space agency will be able to do it by then. The biggest concern is whether NASA’s commercial partners, SpaceX and Blue Origin, will have a lander ready in time.
China, meanwhile, is working toward its own 2030 deadline, setting the stage for a new chapter in the race to return humans to the lunar surface. For now, both programs have many technical hurdles to clear.