China's Space Program Thread II
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Minor update on Tianwen-2 mission. According to an article authored by Andrew Jones and published in the US space industry website (increasingly defense-oriented) SpaceNews.com:
The probe is anticipated to enter a co-orbital state with the asteroid in early July this year.
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The probe is anticipated to enter a co-orbital state with the asteroid in early July this year.
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CMSA confirms the first Hong-Konger and Macau astronaut is expected to fly this year.
Notable lack of mention of Mengzhou-1 while focusing on infrastructure build-up at Wenchang for the lunar program, it's best not to draw any conclusion yet, since other parts are vague too, like the one about the pakistani astronaut (which is expected to fly on Shenzhou 24)
It's quite impressive how many tests CMSA did with just one static fire test article and one mengzhou prototype tbh.
It seems the Initial Prototype of Qingzhou is still expected to launch on the Maiden flight of the Lijian-2 (there were some doubts); this initial prototype is not expected to dock to Tiangong but instead verify systems in free flight, Docking will come with the inaugural launch of the full version toward the end of the year.
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I would not be overly confident about that. I listened to the interview with Jared issacman today and he struck me as someone with an idea of what he wants to do. Artemis program could be delayed another year and still get to moon before CNSA.
I don't think CNSA and CMSA care one way or the other if they make their lunar landing before the Artemis program's first landing (now Artemis-4); seems to me that if that eventuality comes to pass, they'd be glad to take a bow but they'd celebrate China's first lunar landing regardless. I think Chinese presenters have been talking about doing a landing "by" or "before" 2030 (年前) as far back as the 2010s. This entire "second Moon race" idea is something mostly ginned up by the media, US politicians, and by the US military-industrial-thinkg-tank complex to avoid the spectacle and embarrassment of potential headlines saying 'America has been overtaken' by an upstart. In so far as this political construction lights a fire under the Artemis program, it may be overall a useful thing for NASA; other than that, thiis narrative is rather silly: the US landed on the Moon in 1969, and when China in turn lands for the first time, they also will be able to ook upon this achievement with legitimate pride, In short, the current lunar efforts should allow everyone to "win".
That said, we all may be jaded about Moon landings due to the fairly large number of prior human and robotic landings (including those by India and Japan) but this endeavour is an exceedingly difficult engineering task even now, and crewed landing is still more difficult by an order of magnitude. Both US and China still must face challenges in order to make their crewed landings in the next few years.
For China, tthe 2029/2030 goal requires that the CZ-10A and Mengzhou make a good showing in its upcoming orbital flight, the 3-core CZ-10 make a near perfrect lunar flight with lunar-Mengzhou in 2027, near-perfect robotic Mengzhou-Lanyue landing demonstration, in-situ demonstration of lunar space sutis etc. They certainly have the potential to accomplish it, but everything needs to go right in order to keep to the schedule.
For the US, I think the challenges are even greater despite Issacman's February 27th press conference. Adding a LEO Artemis-3 docking mission in 2027 does not magically solve the launch cadence problem; the program was desinged to have one launch per year, and you can't simply command that it should now be 10 months when actual current cadence is 3.5 years per launch and counting without making major changes in staffing, structure, and/or funding. Then there's the issue of when will the prototype Starship HLS and prototype Blue Moon HLS make their first appearance? It's only about a year from a notional Feb/March 2027 launch to LEO for the Artemis-3 LEO docking mission (4/2026 Artemis-2 launch + ~10 months would give Feb or March 2027). Oh, and the newest version of Starship still has to dmonstrate orbital insertion. As for the Artemis-4 lunar landing mission, SpaceX and Blue Origin still need to first demonstrate successful orbital transfer of cryogenic fuels, not to mention successful robotic lunar landings by their respective HLS systems. There are still other issues, including e.g. the availability of SLS' new upper stages for these missions (this also assumes that the US economy remains largely problem-free in the interim). So color me skeptical that they'll pull off Artemis-4 (or even Artemis-5!) by the Trump-imposed deadline of 2028.
In my opinion, both US and China should just focus on their own programs rather than constantly looking over their geopolitical shoulders; after all, there's enough glory to go around for everyone as long as things are done carefully and safely. Unfortunately, on the US side most parties (NASA, USSF, Congress) are starting to look at the lunar South Pole landings via an exclusively geo-strategic lens (most likely a manifestation of group-think syndrome) so I fear we're condemned to hear an endless parade of "Moon Race" trash-talk for the next decade.
Issacman knows what he wants and might actually be sane, which set him apart from a lot of other Americans, but he's not the only one calling the shots, not from below and not from above. You can tell because someone who delayed and simplified A3 isn't dumb enough to actually believe A4 and A5 can both happen in 2028, those are for people above.
And at end of the day it's HLS that's the problem, not SLS or Orion, so it doesn't even matter what Issacman wants, he can only choose to be realistic about it.
The Artemis program has many problems but the HLS Landers are the bigger one,
Previously the americans's hope to return first was that the accelerated development of SpaceX's and/or Blue Origin's HLS could beat previous trends and accelerate to the point of being ready comfortably before the CMSA's Lunar architecture; by this point the SLS Block 1 and Orion, proven vehicles with existing hardware, could launch and execute on the landing before CMSA.
This changes two thing:
-The american lunar return now requires the development of a new upper stage and therefore a new version to the SLS; even if the upper stage is derived from the Commercial Centaur V by ULA, the adaptation of the upper stage, its ground infrastructure and its crew rating will likely take longer than the advertised 2 years, for reference, it took NASA, Boeing and ULA 5 years (, p8) between ordering and delivery of the current ICPS upper stage, which is adapted from ULA's Delta IV launcher, we are talking about the same organisations (ULA and Boeing Space), that have generally not gotten more efficient over the past decade. The new upper stage adds significant uncertainty to the SLS's readiness where there wasn't before.
-This favours SpaceX's lander by adding the intermediary milestone (that is now Artemis III in H2 2027) where both HLS provider have to demonstrate docking with Orion and a crew-rated habitable module; while pushing the requirement of uncrewed lunar landing demonstration beyond; SpaceX has more experience with docking through Dragon, while Blue Origin will soon have more experience in lunar landing with the Blue Moon MK1 lander (and their new accelerated HLS is a derivative of it that doesn't require orbital refueling). The first provider that can be ready for Artemis III and do joint training with Orion will undoubtedly be selected for Artemis IV, The new intermediary requirement of Artemis 3 stacks the odds in favour of SpaceX and effectively remove one of the two possibility of the accelerated HLS development beating the odds.
On the positive side for NASA this will slightly derisk the lunar landing by demonstrating Orion-HLS docking.
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