Artemis Program · China · U.S. · Ars Technica
China publicly shares plan for a lunar landing within three years
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Chinese space officials confirmed this weekend that the Asian nation plans to land its astronauts on the Moon within three years.
Key facts
- In the last 12 months, the US Congress and White House have given broad latitude to NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman to streamline the Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon
- For example, in August 2025, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mock-up of its 26-ton Lanyue lunar lander
- At the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, officials, including Wang Xiang, chief designer for the lunar exploration program, laid out the country’s most publicly detailed plans
- Recently, the Mengzhou spacecraft for the 2027 test atop a Long March 10A rocket arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan, China, where the mission will launch
Summary
At the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, officials, including Wang Xiang, chief designer for the lunar exploration program, laid out the country’s most publicly detailed plans yet for a series of missions leading up to a crewed lunar landing “before 2030.” China’s lunar landings will involve a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to what NASA did in the 1960s and early 1970s with the Apollo program. According to slides shared on social media, the current plan involves:. An uncrewed test of the Long March 10A rocket (a single-stick variant, with no boosters) and the Mengzhou spacecraft to low-Earth orbit.