China details crewed Moon landing plan, targeting touchdown before 2030
Officials at a Beijing conference outlined missions leading to a crewed lunar landing before 2030.
Chinese space officials have set out their most publicly detailed plans yet for a crewed lunar landing "before 2030". The details came at the Seventh Manned Spaceflight Conference in Beijing, where Wang Xiang, chief designer for the lunar exploration program, was among the speakers.
The landings will use a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to NASA's Apollo program. China lacks a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V, so the crew and the lunar lander will launch separately to the Moon.
The plan, as shown in slides shared on social media, omits a mission like Apollo 8 or Artemis II, in which a crew flies to the Moon and returns without landing. The Mengzhou vehicle is still expected to fly with astronauts closer to Earth, on missions to Tiangong, China's space station in low-Earth orbit.
NASA has set a target of landing humans on the Moon by 2028, about a year ahead of China. However, major questions surround the development of a lunar lander, for which both SpaceX and Blue Origin have multibillion-dollar development contracts. Depending on how these projects go, a US lunar landing could be delayed to 2030 or even later.
Sourcearstechnica.com