China made history in late June when its Chang’e-6 space probe returned to Earth with the first samples from the far side of the Moon, nearly 2 kg of lunar soil that scientists have begun to extract through their research. What’s next for China on the Moon?
Chang’e-7 and its flying probe. The Chang’e-7 mission, scheduled for 2026, will mark the first trip to the permanently dark regions of the lunar south pole, home to reserves of water ice that China plans to explore with an orbiter, a lander and a small flying probe.
The flying probe will be unlike anything ever deployed on the Moon. It will be able to move from brightly lit areas to the bottoms of dark craters, overcoming the limitations of traditional rovers. It will feature molecular water analyzers, drilling tools, mechanical arms and heaters for spectral analysis.
Chang’e-8 as a precursor to the lunar base. The Chang’e-8 mission, planned for 2028, will be a technology demonstrator for China’s future International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
The probe will land on the Moon to test in-situ resource utilization technologies, such as a 3D printing experiment with materials extracted from lunar soil, among other methods necessary for the construction of the future scientific base.
The first manned mission. The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) plans to send two astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2030. It will be a simpler mission than NASA’s Artemis III, but will still require the launch of two spacecraft: an orbiter called Mengzhou and a lander called Lanyue.
Mengzhou will host three Chinese astronauts who will travel from Earth to lunar orbit. Lanyue will put two of them on the surface of the Moon. It will then return them to Mengzhou, which will then bring them back to Earth.
The beginning of the ILRS lunar base. Both the Chinese space agency (CNSA) and the Russian space agency (Roscosmos) are founding members of the ILRS project, but in practice it is China that leads it.
The lunar base will be built in ambitious phases. The first will be unmanned and will extend through 2035 with a series of robotic missions to establish research laboratories, technology demonstrators and life support for future manned missions. There will also be missions to expand and maintain the lunar base modules as needed.
5,000 scientists on the Moon. The second phase will be manned and will extend to create a city of 5,000 scientists from around the world working on the Moon, according to the vision of Wu Weiren, designer of China’s Lunar Exploration Program.
The scientific base will be located at the lunar south pole, close to the ice deposits. It will have houses, laboratories, space mining tools, communication antennas and an entire energy infrastructure based on solar panels and a nuclear reactor, essential for the long lunar nights.
Participating countries. China is open to international collaboration, although for now more countries have signed NASA’s Artemis Accords. Countries participating in the ILRS project are Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Serbia, Pakistan, South Africa, Thailand, Venezuela, Kazakhstan and Senegal.
Like NASA, China aims to establish a permanent crew on the Moon that could serve as a bridge for future missions to Mars.
Image | CNSA
In WorldOfSoftware |.China published a video of what its base on the Moon will be like and it contains a rather strange detail