America is moonstruck once more.
With Artemis II and its four crewmembers returning to Earth after a record-breaking, and visually spectacular, trip around the moon, the U.S. love affair with lunar exploration has been renewed.
Something else from that era may have been renewed as well. In the punch-counterpunch style of the 1960s, a rival nation’s response to Artemis could be coming in a matter of months. In the second half of this year, the China National Space Administration is scheduled to launch Chang’e 7, an uncrewed mission that – if successful – would be the nation’s second successful landing on the lunar south pole. (In 2023, India became the first nation to land in the resource-rich region.)
Why We Wrote This
The United States and China are leading a global competition to build a permanent presence on the moon. Scientific research, national pride, and potentially lucrative lunar mining operations are at stake.
NASA will hope to one-up the Chinese again in 2028, when it plans to return humans to the lunar surface on Artemis IV.
It has all the hallmarks of a space race, experts say, but it differs in important ways from America’s contest with the Soviet Union in the 1950s and ’60s. Among them: Both China and the United States want to not just return to the lunar surface but establish a permanent presence there. And unlike the ’60s, there are more than two players in the space business.
Slow and steady progress over two decades has China with its nose in front right now, according to experts, but with NASA last month announcing a new plan to build a moon base in the early 2030s, the U.S. has the capability – and renewed focus – to take the lead in lunar exploration once more. Both countries have ambitious goals, and with human operations on the moon unprecedented and difficult, this race is likely to last over a decade. If the first space race was a rocket-fueled roller coaster, this one might be closer to the Iditarod.
“If the finish line is the moon becoming a site of regular, sustained human activity, we’re still fairly early in that race,” says David Burbach, director of the Space Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College, speaking in his personal capacity.
China’s Chang’e
In 1970, China launched its first satellite into orbit. It would be 30 years before the Chinese government began even researching a mission to the moon. Then, in 2007, the Chang’e 1 probe launched to the moon.
The China National Space Administration has since performed five other Chang’e missions – named after the Chinese moon goddess – and they have all been successful. The missions have delivered two rovers to the lunar surface, Yutu 1 and Yutu 2. The second rover is still operating after its arrival with Chang’e 4 in January 2019.
Amid these successes on the moon, Chinese astronauts, called taikonauts, have routinely set new milestones. Their first manned flight in space came in 2003, and in 2008 the first spacewalk. The agency’s Tiangong space station has been operational since 2022.
The Chinese space agency doesn’t share much information, but it appears that the agency hasn’t had any major setbacks or failures, says Dr. Burbach.
“They’ve tried some really ambitious things, and they’ve all succeeded on the first try,” he adds.
China has now put forward plans to build a permanent base on the lunar south pole – a region believed to be rich in water ice, a resource chemically different from ice on Earth that could be used to make propellant and support human inhabitants. The China National Space Administration in 2021 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, pledging to jointly build the International Lunar Research Station.
Described as a “comprehensive scientific experiment base with the capability of long-term autonomous operation,” the station, according to China, will be “open to all interested countries and international partners.” At least 12 countries have reportedly partnered on the project, including Venezuela, Egypt, and Pakistan. Separately, India aims to land its own crewed mission to the moon by 2040, and has signed an agreement with Japan to explore the lunar south pole.
The Chinese space agency wants to build a robotic base by 2035, and then a base that can support human inhabitants by 2045. The Chang’e 7 mission is seen as the first step in that process.
China does have one significant advantage over the U.S., experts note. The country’s slow and steady progress is aided by its autocratic government, which can fund the lunar program as it sees fit without having to worry about public opinion or a change in administration.
“They have a more spaced out timeline they’re working with,” says Victoria Samson, chief director for Space Security and Stability at the Secure World Foundation, a private nonprofit focused on promoting peaceful uses of outer space.
“Our [timeline] keeps shifting to the right, whereas China’s has more or less stayed at 2030.”
New focus at NASA
In late March, NASA announced that it was accelerating its lunar exploration program.
The moon had been an afterthought in U.S. spaceflight for a half century. The space race had been won, and NASA turned its attention to reusability and international collaboration through the space shuttle program and the International Space Station.
For decades, presidents flipped NASA priorities back and forth. George W. Bush proposed sending crewed missions to the moon, and establishing a base there, as a stepping stone for Mars exploration. Barack Obama canceled that effort, shifting focus to sending humans to Mars by 2030. Early in his first term, Donald Trump created the Artemis program to return humans to the moon.
Yet Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that orbited the moon, didn’t launch until 2022. With a race against China likely to focus minds – and open purse strings – in Congress, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced changes to speed things up.
“The clock is running in this great-power competition, and success or failure will be measured in months, not years,” Mr. Isaacman said on March 24. NASA, he added, should “concentrate [its] extraordinary resources.”
The changes – announced on the eve of the Artemis II launch – are dramatic. The agency paused work on Lunar Gateway, a multinational space station meant to replace the International Space Station, to focus on a moon base. The Artemis III mission was narrowed and moved to 2027 instead of 2028. Artemis IV aims to land humans on the moon in 2028.
Overall, NASA wants to increase its launch cadence from one launch every three years to one launch every 10 months. The new, $20 billion plan hopes to establish a permanent human presence on the moon by the 2030s.
A long road ahead
In that sense, this new space race – or space marathon – is about who can build a moon base first. The competition “is ultimately about who gets to control the lunar surface,” says Norbert Schorghofer, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, in an email.
“Whoever controls access to the lunar surface and lunar resources will for all practical purposes own the moon,” he adds.
Geopolitics are another uncertainty. Whoever establishes a stronger presence could take the lead in setting rules for lunar operations, including mining the moon’s potentially billion-dollar resources. Both the U.S. and China are signatories to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which says no nation can own a planetary body, but how the agreement would be enforced is unclear. Efforts by private companies to establish operations on the moon is another complication.
Centre for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure-Roscosmos State Space Corporation/AP/File
NASA sees the Artemis Accords, developed with the State Department in 2020, as a key effort to establish “a common set of principles” for the latest era of space exploration. The document explicitly permits the mining of celestial bodies, and outlines standards for resource extraction, space debris, and the sharing of scientific data, among other topics. Sixty-one nations have signed on to the agreement as of January. Two notable exceptions: China and Russia.
But there is a long road ahead. If the U.S. and China are engaged in a metaphorical space marathon, they’re both currently in the first mile, experts say. That’s a lifetime in geopolitics, and in the harsh environment of the moon, the two countries may face bigger problems than each other.
“If nothing else, the moon is a very challenging environment to keep people alive in,” says Ms. Samson.
“China will be following the same laws of thermodynamics on the moon as us,” she adds. “So there’s no reason they shouldn’t want to coordinate with us on lunar missions.”