Slow and steady wins the race, or so goes the fable. The China Manned Space Agency, or CMSA, has repeatedly denied any rivalry with the United States akin to the race to the moon in the 1960s. But step-by-step, one element at a time over a period of decades, it has built a human space program with goals that include landing astronauts on the moon by 2030 and starting a base there in the following years. And—partly because launch dates for NASA’s Artemis III moon landing keep slipping toward that same time frame—U.S. space leaders are ratcheting up the space race rhetoric.
“We are in a great competition with a rival that has the will and means to challenge American exceptionalism across multiple domains, including in the high ground of space,” said Jared Isaacman, the new head of NASA, in December. “This is not the time for delay, but for action, because if we fall behind—if we make a mistake—we may never catch up, and the consequences could shift the balance of power here on Earth.”
NASA’s Artemis II is almost ready to take its crew on a circumlunar test flight, and the White House has said that U.S. astronauts should prioritize a lunar landing by 2028—but could China slip in ahead? How would a Chinese moon flight work? Does the Chinese space program have technology that matches or beats the United States?
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“Nobody [in China] would argue that we are in a space race,” says Namrata Goswami, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who has written extensively about China’s space effort, “but they might be engaged in activity that showcases China as a space power, and they are very serious about getting somewhere first.”
What Are the Mengzhou and Lanyue Spacecraft?
China’s lunar hardware builds on existing engineering. It is based on a multipurpose crew ship called Mengzhou, with capacity for six or seven astronauts, though as few as three may actually fly on a trip from Earth to low lunar orbit. (China watchers dispense with the word “taikonaut” for its crew members, by the way; the word was coined in 1998 and has not been used by the Chinese government itself. China generally uses the word yuhangyuan, roughly translated as “traveler of the universe.”)
Mengzhou, according to what the CMSA has shown, includes a crew section in the shape of a truncated cone or frustum, with a service module holding power and propulsion systems in the rear. If you squint at it, you’ll see a resemblance to the American Artemis or Apollo spacecraft, the SpaceX Crew Dragon, or the yet-to-be-flown European Nyx. Basic aerodynamics make a blunt cone a very efficient shape for safely launching a spacecraft and returning it through Earth’s atmosphere.
The Mengzhou command ship uses parachutes and airbags during a 2025 landing test in northwest China. Wang Heng/Xinhua/Getty Images
Mengzhou is billed as reusable, with an outer heat shield that can be replaced after flight. Landings would take place in China’s western desert. “Coupled with the landing method of airbag cushioning,” says the CMSA in a translated statement, “the spacecraft itself can be better protected from damage and allow the reuse of the spacecraft.”
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