Special to CosmicTribune.com, November 4, 2026

Geostrategy-Direct

China has publicly disclosed plans for a lunar landing within three years.

Unveiled at the Seventh Manned Space Symposium at Beihang University in Beijing on Oct. 31-Nov. 1, the plan will use a “two launches, one lunar landing” strategy. Two Long March-10 carrier rockets will launch separately from Wenchang — one carrying the Lanyue lunar lander and another carrying the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft.

China’s planned lunar landings would involve a lunar-orbit rendezvous similar to what NASA did in the 1960s and early 1970s with the Apollo program.

However, lacking a rocket as powerful as the Saturn V vehicle, the crew and lunar lander will launch separately to the Moon.

The spacecraft and lander will dock in lunar orbit. Three astronauts will travel aboard the Mengzhou, and two of them will transfer into the Lanyue lander to descend to the lunar surface.

Timeline of China’s lunar landing tests:

• 2027: Uncrewed test flights begin, including a test of the shorter Long March 10A and the Mengzhou spacecraft rendezvousing with the Tiangong space station.

• 2028: An uncrewed test flight of the larger three-stage Long March 10 rocket and the Lanyue lunar lander for autonomous descent, landing, and ascent testing.

• 2029: Combined lunar-orbit rendezvous and docking demonstrations between Mengzhou and Lanyue.

• Before 2030: Full crewed lunar landing mission carrying Chinese astronauts (taikonauts) to the Moon’s surface.

Key hardware:

• Long March-10: The primary carrier rocket family, featuring both a heavy three-core version and a smaller, lighter single-core Long March 10A variant for initial testing.

• Mengzhou: The new-generation crewed spacecraft designed to transport astronauts from Earth.

• Lanyue: The specialized lunar lander that carries crew from lunar orbit down to the surface and back.

In August 2025, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mock-up of its 26-ton Lanyue lunar lander. The test used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired its main engines and fine-control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from a location near Beijing.

Recently, the Mengzhou spacecraft for the 2027 test atop a Long March 10A rocket arrived at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan, China, where the mission will launch.

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  China sets manned lunar landing by 2030 using ‘smaller and lighter’ Long March-10