China has once again demonstrated its growing prowess in space exploration, successfully landing its Chang’e 6 spacecraft in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the Moon.
This marks the fourth time China has landed a spacecraft on the Moon, and it is the country’s most ambitious lunar mission to date.
The Chang’e 6 mission, which touched down on Saturday evening (US time), aims to collect lunar samples over a 48-hour period. Utilizing both a drill to gather subsurface material and a robotic arm to collect regolith from the surface, the autonomous spacecraft is set to bring these samples back to Earth.
The return flight is expected to commence on Monday evening (US time), marking the first time samples will be returned from the Moon’s far side.
China’s lunar exploration program has been characterized by its methodical and incremental approach. The Chang’e 3 mission in December 2013 saw China successfully land a rover on the Moon’s near side.
Five years later, the country launched the Queqiao 1 relay spacecraft and the Chang’e 4 mission, making China the first country to land on the Moon’s far side, which lacks direct line-of-sight communication with Earth.
In December 2020, China achieved another milestone with the Chang’e 5 mission, which landed on the Moon’s near side and returned 1.7 kilograms of lunar dust and rocks to Earth.
This accomplishment placed China alongside the United States and the Soviet Union as the only nations to have returned lunar samples.
The Chang’e 6 mission builds on these successes, combining elements of previous lunar spacecraft to explore the less-studied far side of the Moon.
Future missions are expected to focus on the lunar south pole, paving the way for potential human landings.
China has set its sights on an Apollo-like lunar landing, aiming to place two astronauts on the Moon by 2030.
The country also envisions constructing a “research station” at the Moon’s south pole later in the 2030s. Given China’s straightforward approach, these timelines appear achievable.
Meanwhile, NASA is spearheading its own return to the Moon through the Artemis Program, which involves a mix of government, commercial, and semi-private missions.
Originally targeting a human landing by 2026, experts now predict a more realistic timeframe of 2028 to 2032. NASA’s strategy, though more complex, emphasizes sustainability through reusable rockets and spacecraft, and in-space refueling.
“The most dominant space storyline for the rest of this decade is how this ‘race’ plays out,” said Greg Autry, the director of space leadership at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management. “Both in terms of whether China’s space program or NASA reaches the Moon first, and which nation has a more sustainable program.”
While China’s approach benefits from its simplicity, experts like Autry believe the United States’ combination of commercial and government partnerships offers a stronger long-term strategy.
“China’s human spaceflight program has been slow,” noted Autry, co-author of Red Moon Rising on the US-China space race. “SpaceX has flown more people to space in the last four years than China has since their program’s first flight over 20 years ago.
America has better technology and a better and more diverse collection of launch vehicles and dozens of companies working on solutions to the bottlenecks we face in landers and spacesuits.”
As China and the United States vie for lunar dominance, the world watches to see not just who will set foot on the Moon next, but who will establish a sustainable presence there. For China, emulating NASA’s Apollo Program achievements may suffice. For NASA, it would be a policy failure to fall behind.
