NASA’s Artemis program may be in the lead, but China could still win the race to the new moon

China is working on its own moon landing. Could it send astronauts to the Moon before NASA’s Artemis program?

By Andrew Jones edited by Lee Billings

NASA launched four astronauts on a pioneering journey around the Moon: the Artemis II assignment. Follow our coverage here.

With Artemis IIThe Orion spacecraft and its four crews approaching a water landing off the coast of San Diego, California, after a spectacularly successful flyby of the moon, NASA’s plan to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in over 50 years, it now seems almost unstoppable. But it may still be Chinese astronauts, rather than American, who will take the next fateful steps on the Moon in the 21st century.

from NASA Artemis II The circumlunar mission dominated the spaceflight schedule this year, with its crew reach new heights and come back a stunning view of Earth from deep space. Yet China has quietly made its own, albeit less dramatic, progress toward sending its astronauts to the Moon.

On February 11, a single-stage version of the Chinese lunar rocket under development, the Long March 10, topped with a Mengzhou spacecrafttaken off from a platform at the Wenchang space launch site, on the island of Hainan, in the south of the country. At the start of the ascent, mission controllers deliberately triggered a solid rocket system designed to quickly move the spacecraft away from danger in the event of a problem with its launch vehicle. Mengzhou then descended via parachutes to be recovered in the South China Sea, marking a successful mid-flight abort of the uncrewed spacecraft. Meanwhile, the Long March 10 stage continued its flight to simulate a full orbital mission before performing a power return and controlled propulsive splashdown in waves – a feat that NASA’s current moon rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), just can’t match.

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These tests pave the way for the crucial next step: a full orbital flight of Long March 10 and Mengzhou later this year, although most likely without a crew. As is usual for China, which tends to remain tight-lipped about many details of its space projects, the nation has not disclosed when exactly this flight will take place. Candidate mission fixes for the maiden flight suggest that Mengzhou, which has a low-Earth orbit variant designed to carry six or seven astronauts and another to take three to low lunar orbit, could meet or fly alongside it. Chinese Tiangong space station. The rocket will be the Long March 10A, a lightweight version of the rocket that will be aimed at low Earth orbit rather than any lunar destination.

China is not yet ready to carry out a crewed circumlunar mission like the United States, which began development of the Orion spacecraft in the 2000s and redesigned it to go with the SLS rocket in the early 2010s. But China is making progress on all the hardware needed to reach the Moon, with a stated goal of a crewed landing before 2030. Notably, the nation has already tested a key component that the United States still working to put online: landing gear. Last year, China demonstrated its Lanyue crewed lunar landerperforming a propulsive landing on the Moon and lunar launch tests under simulated lunar gravity conditions. In the United States, SpaceX and Blue Origin are both working on NASA-funded lander concepts needed to achieve an Artemis landing in 2028 possible. Meanwhile, the new launch facilities at Wenchang, intended to accommodate the Long March 10 rocket, are almost complete.

The full Long March 10 will use a common booster core configuration, similar to how the SpaceX Falcon Heavy is essentially a triple-sized Falcon 9. After the 10A test flights, the next step will be to bring together three booster cores – something commercial company CAS Space achieved in China for the first time late last month – for the larger rocket and test flights to the Moon.

To reach the Moon, China will use two Long March 10 rockets, one launching a crewed Mengzhou spacecraft and the other launching the Lanyue lunar lander. These will end up in low lunar orbit, with two astronauts transferred from Mengzhou to Lanyue for the descent to the lunar surface. It is likely that China will fly crewed low-Earth orbit missions and uncrewed lunar missions before moving to a Artemis II– style mission in the next two years, setting up a potential crewed Moon landing attempt before the end of the decade.

NASA, aiming for a landing in 2028 with Artemis IV, relies on a complex network of commercial and international partners, while China’s more centralized approach depends largely on its state contractor, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

“If the Chinese can maintain a single concentrated effort, they will maintain an advantage because the United States divides its resources and appears to be making big structural changes to its programs very late in the day,” says Bleddyn Bowen, co-director of the Center for Space Research at Durham University in England. “Ironically, China’s efforts today more closely resemble the U.S. Apollo lunar program of the 1960s, while the U.S. Artemis program more closely resembles the Soviet Union’s lunar program. competing design offices from the late 1960s.”

The narrative of a “race” is difficult to avoid. But it depends on the competitor’s point of view. “It’s really one-sided, at least in public,” says Victoria Samson, chief director of space security and stability at the Secure World Foundation. “The United States constantly cites China’s intentions regarding the Moon as the reason it must return there first, while I don’t think I’ve seen anything equivalent in Chinese statements.” This is not to say that China is not investing in lunar exploration: Samson sees geopolitical competition with the United States as a driver of China’s space program.

“I see the United States coming first, but just barely, and I think the Chinese have a better chance of getting there. a station with a permanent crew on the Moon first,” she adds.

Race or not, the two rivals will need to reach an agreement on key aspects of lunar exploration, says Samson.

“If the United States really wants to have a permanent human presence on the Moon, we are going to have to find a solution. how to coordinate with the Chinese on issues of security and interoperability, whether we like it or not,” she says. “People’s lives will depend on it.”