The race to return to the Moon and build a manned base no longer has a clear leader. While China advances steadily and without major delays in its lunar program, NASA faces increasing technical and budgetary challenges in the ambitious Artemis missions. The United States was already on the Moon 50 years ago, but it cannot afford a symbolic defeat against its great rival.
China’s rapid advances towards the Moon
The germ of the space race between China and NASA dates back to 2011, when the United States Congress signed the Wolf Amendment, which prohibits US federal agencies such as NASA from collaborating with Chinese entities. Intended to prevent the transfer of sensitive technologies that could have military applications, the Wolf Amendment is the reason why China was unable to participate in the International Space Station and now has its own permanently inhabited space station: Tiangong.
In parallel to its program of manned flights to low Earth orbit, China has a healthy lunar program that has unprecedented milestones to its credit. Since 2019, it is the only country that has landed on the far side of the Moon. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 robotic mission brought back samples of lunar soil from a young region of the near side. In 2024 they have closed the circle with Chang’e-6, which has brought the first samples of the hidden side of the satellite.
These are impressive milestones, especially given the rapid development of all the technology involved; including rockets, probes and lunar rovers. But the United States is for now the only country that has sent humans to the Moon, and the one that plans to return to the lunar surface before anyone else, with the Artemis III mission, scheduled for September 2026.
Today, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has revealed the design of its spacesuit for missions to the surface of the Moon. The equivalent of the suit that Axiom is developing for NASA. Designed to protect astronauts from radiation and the harsh lunar environment, the Chinese suit features materials that resist the thermal conditions and abrasive dust of the Moon.
It is white with red stripes and incorporates Chinese cultural elements. It is equipped with a multifunctional control panel, cameras for recording close-up and remote scenes, and a panoramic anti-glare visor. In addition to all the joints to facilitate mobility on the lunar surface, which astronauts Zhai Zhigang and Wang Yaping have demonstrated live walking, crouching and climbing stairs.
Although the initial flights are relatively simple compared to NASA’s Artemis missions, China’s plans on the Moon are as ambitious as those of the United States. They revolve around the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) project, a scientific base at the south pole of the satellite in which other countries such as Russia will participate.
It is expected that by 2035, this base will be able to house 5,000 scientists from around the world. The ILRS will serve as a platform for scientific research, technology development, commercial industries such as space mining, and as a springboard for future manned missions to Mars.
NASA’s challenges with the Artemis program
NASA’s Artemis program also has global aspirations and involves the collaboration of dozens of countries to create a lunar station and a sustainable base. But, like the Chinese lunar program, it will begin with round trips with the initial goal of sending the first woman to the Moon.
The Artemis roadmap has been delayed and will likely continue to be delayed. Artemis II (scheduled for September 2025) will be the first crewed flight aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, itself launched by the space agency’s SLS rocket. Three American astronauts and one Canadian will circle the Moon on a free return trajectory and return to Earth assisted by the satellite’s gravity.
On Artemis III (scheduled for September 2026), four astronauts will dock in lunar orbit with a SpaceX Starship. Two will stay on Orion and two others (including a woman) will go down in the Starship to the surface of the Moon. A week later, Starship will return to Moon orbit and the astronauts will return to Earth aboard Orion.
To get here, NASA will have to solve a lot of problems that it has encountered in recent months, starting with the failures that were detected in the Orion spacecraft after its first unmanned flight around the Moon, the mission Artemis I. Problems include heat shield damage, melted screws, and electrical system anomalies.
The main concern is the ship’s heat shield. NASA discovered more than 100 areas where the material protecting the capsule from atmospheric reentry broke away, forming holes. This shield is the largest ever built for a space capsule and is designed to withstand temperatures of up to 2,760°C. As the causes are investigated, NASA is considering modifications to the shield design or reentry trajectory, which could further delay flights.
The SLS rocket, developed by Boeing, performed as planned, but it has a potentially more serious problem for the future of the Artemis program: an unfathomable history of cost overruns. The Price tag for developing the SLS is estimated to be around $17 billion, with each launch of the huge expendable rocket costing around $4.1 billion.
Another significant problem with the SLS is the cost overrun in the construction of the ML-2 mobile launch tower, which will be necessary to launch a more powerful version of the rocket, the SLS Block 1B, during the Artemis IV and later missions. NASA paid $383 million to the Bechtel company to build ML-2 with a delivery date in March 2023. However, costs have skyrocketed to $2.7 billion (assumed by NASA) and the delivery date has been postponed until at least September 2027.
The reason for these challenges is the Frankeinstein-architecture of the Artemis program. The Orion spacecraft is also derived from the Constellation program. It was originally designed for six crew members, so it is larger and heavier than necessary, and has a very bulky shield. Also for this reason, the Orion uses a service module based on the European ATV spacecraft, developed by the European Space Agency for the Constellation program.
The SLS rocket comes from a previous program called Constellation that was cancelled. Although it reuses space shuttle components, the rocket is one of the most expensive parts of the program and has many wondering why NASA doesn’t directly use a SpaceX Starship. However, Starship is the most contested piece of the Artemis program.
The development of Starship is being as rapid or faster than any SpaceX program, but Elon Musk’s company is in full war against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and is unable to increase the rate of rocket launches to meet its commitments. with NASA. SpaceX has to land an uncrewed Starship on the Moon next year for Artemis III to happen in 2026.
No one doubts that Starship works anymore, Flight 4 was almost perfect, but the architecture of Artemis III is too complex. It requires the launch of several Starship tankers (between eight and 16) to transfer propellants into orbit to compensate for the evaporation of methane and liquid oxygen at cryogenic temperatures from the ship’s tanks. It is also a huge rocket, more than 50 meters high, which is designed to land standing up.
The Starship is so tall that the two crew members will have to descend about 40 meters in an elevator to reach the surface of the Moon. Its enormous dimensions will have many advantages for future lunar bases, but for now they complicate NASA’s ability to land on the Moon and do so with enough fuel to then take off into orbit. Not to mention the docking with the Orion ship, which has not been tested in flight either.
Conclusion
The combination of technical problems and cost overruns puts NASA in a challenging position that will likely force it to continue delaying the Artemis missions or change the architecture of Artemis III so that it does not include a lunar landing. Meanwhile, China is consistently advancing its lunar objectives, with a simpler and more focused strategy.
Delegating key components of the program to the private sector worked with Crew Dragon and flights to the International Space Station, but reliance on commercial companies like SpaceX for the lander and Axiom for the spacesuits has shown NASA that the two approaches , contractors tendered by the agency vs. Private contracts have their problems. If not, tell SLS and Orion.
For now, Artemis III remains scheduled for 2026 and the Chinese moon landing for 2030. But the possibility of China placing its astronauts on the Moon before NASA is becoming increasingly plausible. Like that of the 20th century, the 21st century space race is not just a matter of national prestige, but has significant geopolitical and economic implications. And the Moon is just a prelude to the real objective: reaching Mars.
Images | CNSA, NASA
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