Science and Exploration

Piecing Together China’s Big Plans To Send Astronauts to the Moon Before 2030

By Leonard David
SpaceRef
September 7, 2023
Filed under , , ,
Piecing Together China’s Big Plans To Send Astronauts to the Moon Before 2030
Work is underway in China to create Moon exploration tools, including a mobile rover to support lunar south pole investigations.
Image credit: China Manned Space Engineering Office.

China’s blossoming space exploration agenda includes sending the country’s astronauts to the Moon for the first time, a master plan that calls for a crew to climb down the ladder of their lander before 2030.

For the last several months, China space experts have repeatedly rolled out how-to-do humans-to-the-Moon exploration. Although cited as preliminary, their strategy as now scoped out is to make use of two carrier rockets hurling a Moon lander and a crewed spacecraft into lunar orbit. The two individual components would then rendezvous and dock with each other so that crew transfer into the Moon lander could be done in lunar orbit.

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Leonard David

Leonard is author of Moon Rush: The New Space Race, Mars – Our Future on the Red Planet, and co-authored with Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin of Mission to Mars – My Vision for Space Exploration - all published by the National Geographic Society.