The United States and China are locked in an intensifying competition over the Moon's south pole, a region both countries believe holds significant reserves of water ice needed to support future missions and permanent lunar bases.
In just the past five years, China has launched Tiangong, a modern orbital laboratory that rivals the aging International Space Station led by the United States, and it has collected the first soil samples from the far side of the Moon, a feat no other nation has repeated.
China's plan to build a permanent settlement on the Moon by 2040 has prompted an urgent response from lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have declared a new space race, while NASA is now promising to build an American lunar outpost. China's aerospace development is largely shrouded in secrecy, making it hard to say with certainty which country currently leads, though there are some clues.
Scientists believe water ice sits at the lunar south pole, a resource that could be converted into rocket fuel, breathable air or drinking water, all vital to sustaining a settlement off Earth. Both the United States and China plan to send robotic explorers to the south pole this year, paving the way for human explorers to follow.
The US is relying on the private sector to build low-cost robotic landers. NASA plans to send a lander called Griffin, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, to the lunar south pole in late 2026. The NASA-funded mission is meant to improve on the performance of two earlier landers, built by another American company, that struggled to touch down on the south pole's notoriously treacherous terrain.
China, meanwhile, is aiming to launch its Chang'e-7 robotic mission this month. The complex mission will use four different robotic vehicles, an orbiter, a lander, a rover and a hopping mobile vehicle, working together to gather unprecedented data. It will include tools to drill into and directly analyze water ice, something the US will not attempt with robotic missions until at least next year.
Tang Yuhua, deputy chief designer of the Chang'e-7 mission, said in a 2025 interview with state media that successfully locating lunar water ice could significantly cut the cost and time needed to transport water from Earth, making it easier to establish a human base for long-term activity on the Moon and enabling further exploration of Mars or deep space.
The coming wave of activity centered on the south pole, with few established international laws to govern the outcome, is heightening the rivalry. The dynamic echoes the Cold War, when NASA's Moon landings were meant to project power and show the world that the technology of Western capitalism outperformed that of the communist East.
But the goal this time is far more ambitious, a future in which people try to thrive in permanent settlements rather than simply visit the Moon, which raises the stakes of the new space race, according to Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan nonprofit organization.
Swope said the long-term vision would take generations to become reality, but that it amounted to a scenario in which people are born, people die, and families and children grow up in a place that is not Earth, which looks far more like a city than an expedition to the south pole.
If that future comes to pass, Swope added, he hopes such extraterrestrial colonies will be governed by rules rooted in Western ideals and democratic principles. Whether China shares that vision remains unknown, he said.
China's Cultural Mission
China's space ambitions come directly from the top. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described turning the country into a space power as an eternal dream, framing the ambition within his broader vision for the nation's rejuvenation, which aims to restore China to a position of global power and prominence, including in science and technology.
In a 2020 speech, Xi said the pace of human space exploration was limitless, and told the program's workers they would embark step by step on a new era of interstellar exploration, contributing to building a strong aerospace nation and achieving the great rejuvenation of China.
Some names used in China's space program point to the Moon's deep cultural significance. The lunar program is named after the goddess Chang'e, a figure from a 4,000-year-old myth celebrated every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Ouyang Ziyuan, the program's chief scientist, said in 2015 that its goals were not merely scientific but also a dream the Chinese nation had carried for thousands of years.
More recently, the country has turned its attention to expanding its exploration efforts beyond robotics, with the goal of becoming the second nation to send its own citizens to the Moon.
Zhang Jingbo, spokesperson for the China Manned Space Agency, said in May that the country would spare no effort to achieve its goal of the first Chinese Moon landing by 2030.
Twelve NASA astronauts walked on the Moon and returned with about 385 kilograms (850 pounds) of lunar rocks and soil, but no one has set foot on the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended in 1972.
Secrecy Around Spending
It is unclear how much money China is spending on its lunar program, since even experts who closely track its efforts have no visibility into the country's finances. But given the pace and precision of China's robotic Chang'e missions, many experts believe the country will meet its 2030 target.
CNN contacted China's State Council, which oversees the China National Space Administration, for comment.
Jim Bridenstine, a former NASA administrator, told CNN that one of the challenges with China is its lack of transparency, but that what is known is that when China sets goals for itself, it achieves them. Bridenstine said he believes the next people to walk on the Moon will most likely be taikonauts, or Chinese astronauts.
That prospect worries US lawmakers, policymakers and former NASA leaders. NASA's current plan calls for landing astronauts on the Moon by 2028, though the timeline has already shifted repeatedly and there is widespread expectation of further delays because of engineering and technological challenges.
Jared Isaacman, NASA's current administrator, acknowledged that China is absolutely a major competitor, not just in space but in every field. Isaacman told CNN, for a documentary titled Eclipsing Power: Musk, Bezos and the New Space Race, that he was stating categorically that the Chinese would be able to do what the Soviets could not: get taikonauts to the Moon. He also said publicly that he was confident the US would rise to the challenge and meet the 2028 deadline.
An Evolving Rival
The US has made significant progress in its human exploration efforts, most notably with the Artemis II mission, which sent four astronauts on a trip around the Moon in April. But NASA still does not have a vehicle capable of carrying astronauts to the lunar surface.
Returning to the Moon is not as simple as repeating the Apollo program. NASA cannot, and does not want to, replicate the 20th-century Moon landings. The supply chains, skilled machinists and factories that built Apollo's rockets, landers and command modules no longer exist.
While the Apollo missions landed near the lunar equator, landing near the south pole is considerably more complex and requires more powerful vehicles.
NASA's reliance on the private sector to build this next generation of crewed lunar landers stems partly from the fact that the agency now works with a far smaller budget than it had during the Apollo era.
Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit space exploration advocacy organization, told CNN in an earlier interview that the US is certainly not funding NASA as though it were in a race, and that officials do not want to put the agency in the position of suddenly being seen as a loser when it was never given the resources to truly compete.
Both SpaceX and Blue Origin are developing lunar landers meant to meet NASA's goals. The first real test of these systems could come as soon as next year with Artemis III, a mission meant to send a prototype lander from each company into low Earth orbit to practice docking with NASA's crewed Orion capsule.
It is unclear whether SpaceX's Starship or Blue Origin's Blue Moon, as the two spacecraft are known, will be ready for the test next year. SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment. A Blue Origin spokesperson pointed to a June speech in which John Couluris, the company's senior vice president of lunar permanence, said Blue Origin expected to complete its craft for the Artemis III mission and have it ready by next year, describing the company's recovery from a recent incident as excellent progress.
China's Simplified Approach
China, meanwhile, has focused intensely on its lunar exploration program since 2004, using its centralized, top-down planning system to keep resources flowing toward specific goals.
The rocket, spacecraft and lunar module China is building for its Moon program are very different from the vehicles under development in the US. Details released by state media indicate China is pursuing a simplified approach that would carry humans to the Moon with just two rocket launches, one for an astronaut capsule and another for a lunar lander called Lanyue. The vehicles would need to dock in orbit but would not require refueling in space, unlike the US approach.
China has not yet carried out a lunar flyby or sent its Lanyue lander into space for testing, but it has demonstrated important vehicle capabilities, notably through a series of ground tests last August that showed off the spacecraft's navigation, propulsion and sensor systems. China also carried out a major test flight in February with its Long March 10 lunar rocket and its crewed Mengzhou spacecraft.
