The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?

Last year was supposed to be when humanity went back to the Moon, this time as a prelude to staying. At the time, the schedule appeared improbable; now it looks silly to have ever suggested it. After the failures of Starship earlier this year, many people expressed doubts that America would put humans back on the lunar surface this decade. If so, it gives China an excellent chance to get there first. Is a Chinese victory as inevitable as some think, and if so, what will it mean?

The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

The race is seen as so important at NASA that acting administrator Sean Duffy gave it prominent coverage during this week’s announcement of what was being described as the “clearest sign of life that we've ever found on Mars”, hardly news easy to overshadow.  

History Of The Race Back

There has been talk of returning to the Moon almost since the Apollo missions ended, but for most of that time, little was done. As technologies such as the Space Shuttle proved more expensive and less reliable than had been hoped, the idea was pushed off into the distance.

Gradually, however, prospects improved, driven by a combination of falling launch costs, competition between private space launch companies, and looming international rivalry. 

In 2019, NASA set out ambitious plans for astronauts to orbit the Moon in 2023, followed by a landing in the second half of 2024. Almost immediately, even senior officials made clear that the timeline was unlikely to be met. The schedule had been set by politicians, not the people who knew what was possible, who had a working goal of 2028 instead.

Reality was acknowledged to the point of shifting the date to 2025, and now to 2027. Most observers will be happy if the US achieves its goal by 2030.

Meanwhile, China’s National Space Administration has been building steadily larger Long March rockets. The three-stage Long March 10, and the two-stage version 10a, are the versions on which hopes now rest to take astronauts to lunar orbit and the Moon’s surface.

Where Are We Now?

The Artemis III mission depends on multiple components being developed in parallel, but many are well behind schedule. 

For the plan to work, a Human Landing System (HLS) needs to be placed in lunar orbit by Starship. An Orion spacecraft, launched by SLS rockets, will dock with it, allowing two astronauts to transfer to HLS for the journey to the lunar surface and back. SLS has proven staggeringly expensive and is constantly under threat of being scrapped, as well as suffering long delays.

At least SLS has flown, however, carrying an uncrewed Orion spacecraft around the Moon in 2022. The next flight, to take the first humans to leave low Earth orbit around the Moon, is considered to be on track to fly in the first half of 2026.

Issues with Orion’s heat shield during the first flight raised questions as to the safety of astronauts on future missions during re-entry, but NASA doesn’t think the problems are sufficient to require another uncrewed test flight. Meanwhile, despite the success of its tenth launch, there are serious questions about Starship’s capacity to carry the HLS into space, let alone refuel in space multiple times so it can carry the HLS to lunar orbit. The state of the HLS’s readiness is hard for outsiders to assess.

Long March 10 won’t launch for the first time until 2027, with several successes required before a human landing in 2030. Consequently, the expectations sometimes expressed in the Chinese lunar program keeping to schedule can’t be assumed. Tests of many parts of the system have been conducted, with apparent success, but whether the same transparency for failures exists as NASA provides is harder to say. The fact that Long March 9 was initially intended to do the job, but has gone through repeated redesigns and has now been put off into the distant future, suggests progress might not be as smooth as supporters of the program would like you to believe.

Long March 10 will have less carrying capacity than SLS, Starship, or Long March 9. That could be a problem for plans to build bases on the Moon, requiring either a further generation of rockets or many more missions to bring components, but it might be less of a hindrance for something closer to an Apollo reenactment around the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, the US government seems determined to make things harder for the scientists and engineers working to meet its goals. This week, it was announced that Chinese citizens would be barred from NASA facilities. The justification is to prevent the theft of US ideas. 

Perhaps when the United States was far ahead, such a move might have made sense. Today, losing the contributions of Chinese scientists, who already needed to be cleared as not having links to the Chinese government, just risks putting the US effort further behind.

Will It Matter Who Wins?

Already, some Americans are arguing that it doesn’t matter if China has astronauts on the lunar surface before the United States returns. After all, they note, Armstrong was there fifty-something years earlier. Even some former NASA administrators are trying to move the goalposts. Nevertheless, China beating the Artemis mission would be an enormous symbolic victory, encapsulating the nation’s recent, rapidly growing share of global scientific achievements. 

Whether it makes a material difference who is first to touch down is a different matter. Public versions of China’s initial plans involve staying hours rather than the days intended for Artemis. Would getting there a few months earlier, but getting a fraction of the research done, really be such a win?

On the other hand, what comes after could be much more significant. Both nations have indicated an intent to build nuclear-powered bases that could conduct much more important scientific research, for example, by building radio telescopes free from terrestrial interference. Moreover, for each, a lunar base could be an important step towards sending astronauts to Mars.

On that basis, being slightly ahead at certain staging points might be of more psychological value than actual importance. On the other hand, establishing a large lead, whether it is putting astronauts back on the Moon, or getting a working base established, could prove decisive in the race to establish dominance in space science.