China's Crewed Lunar Program

CMSA (China) · Program · 2023In development

China Manned Space program logo. Credit: China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), via Wikipedia.

In development: first crewed landing targeted before 2030 (as of Feb 2026); CZ-10A/Mengzhou-1 orbital debut targeted late 2026; CZ-10B variant flew and was recovered Jul 10, 2026.

China's crewed lunar program is no longer a paper ambition: since mid-2025 it has flown a pad abort, a full-scale lander landing-and-ascent test, two heavy static fires, a supersonic in-flight abort, and, on July 10, 2026, the first orbital flight of a Long March 10 family rocket, whose booster was caught in a net at sea. The official target has always been a landing "before 2030", not "by 2030" or "around 2030" as often paraphrased in English. No crewed hardware has yet reached orbit: the CZ-10A/Mengzhou-1 orbital debut is targeted for late 2026 (as of July 2026).

Facts as of July 20, 2026, from the sources listed below.

2030

first crewed landing targeted before (as of Feb 2026)

Long March 10 launches per landing mission

27t

CZ-10 payload to trans-lunar injection

planned surface stay for the first two astronauts

Targets are the operator's current plan (as of July 20, 2026) and can change.

The Long March 10A test booster carrying a Mengzhou capsule lifts off from Wenchang for the February 11, 2026 max-Q abort test. Credit: China News Service via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

In development. Completed milestones on this page are historical record; future dates are targets from official announcements, tagged with when they were made, and can change.

Commonly wrong. Three recurring errors in English coverage. (1) The target is a landing "before 2030" (官方: 2030年前), which English sources routinely soften to "by 2030" or "around 2030"; officials have used the same phrasing consistently since May 2023. (2) Anything written before July 10, 2026 saying "only SpaceX and Blue Origin have recovered orbital-class boosters" or "China's Moon rocket has never flown" is now stale: the CZ-10B variant reached orbit and its stage was net-recovered at sea that day, though the crew-rated CZ-10A itself has still not flown as of July 18, 2026. (3) Mengzhou is often called an "upgraded Shenzhou"; it is a clean-sheet new-generation spacecraft (its uncrewed prototype flew in May 2020 on the first CZ-5B), and the Feb 11, 2026 flight was a suborbital abort test, sometimes misreported as the CZ-10's orbital debut. Bonus: official English releases translate Tansuo as "Exploration", so "Exploration rover" and "Tansuo rover" are the same vehicle.

01Mission facts

Lunar-landing phase formally announced	May 29, 2023, by CMSA deputy director Lin Xiqiang: first Chinese crewed lunar landing before 2030
Mission architecture	Dual launch: two Long March 10 rockets send the Lanyue lander and the crewed Mengzhou spacecraft separately to lunar orbit for rendezvous and docking
Surface plan	Two astronauts spend about six hours on the surface on the first landing, with the Tansuo rover
Long March 10 (tri-core lunar version)	92.5 m tall, about 2,189 t at liftoff, 27 t to trans-lunar injection, 70 t to LEO
Element names	Mengzhou spacecraft and Lanyue lander named Feb 24, 2024; Wangyu lunar suit and Tansuo rover named Feb 12, 2025 (public contests)
Mengzhou zero-altitude pad abort	Jun 17, 2025, Jiuquan; capsule landed on airbags about 2 minutes after ignition; China's first pad abort test since 1998; declared fully successful
Lanyue landing and takeoff test	Aug 6, 2025, Huailai, Hebei; full-scale lander flew in a purpose-built extraterrestrial-gravity simulator; first Chinese off-Earth landing-and-ascent trial for a crew vehicle
CZ-10 first static fire	Aug 15, 2025, LC-301 Wenchang; seven YF-100K engines, thrust near 1,000 t, largest such test ever in China
CZ-10 second static fire	Sep 12, 2025; seven engines, 320 seconds, including restarts simulating launch, re-entry, and landing for a reusable first stage
Prototype stage complete	Oct 30, 2025: CMSA spokesperson Zhang Jingbo said CZ-10, Mengzhou, Lanyue, Wangyu suit, and rover "have completed the main work of the prototype stage"
In-flight max-Q abort test	Feb 11, 2026, LC-301 Wenchang; Mengzhou pulled away about one minute into flight at roughly 10-11 km, at maximum dynamic pressure (Global Times, citing CASC experts, gives about one minute and around 10 km with parachutes near 8 km); capsule recovered from the sea, which CMSA called China's first sea-based search and recovery for a crewed spacecraft; the booster flew a recovery-simulation profile with reentry burn, powered descent and propulsive splashdown close to its recovery vessel (the widely repeated ~200 m distance is unofficial)
CZ-10B maiden flight and booster recovery	Jul 10, 2026, 04:15 UTC, Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site; single-stick cargo variant (16 t to LEO reusable) reached orbit and its first stage was caught by the net system of the Linghang Zhe recovery ship: China's first orbital-booster recovery and the world's first net recovery
CZ-10A / Mengzhou-1 orbital debut	Targeted late 2026 (as of Jul 2026); uncrewed Mengzhou on the crew-rated CZ-10A single-stick variant, announced by CMSA Nov 1, 2025; had NOT flown as of Jul 18, 2026
2026 program plan	Feb 27, 2026 CMSA plan: build out lunar-mission facilities at Wenchang plus tracking, communications, and landing-site ground systems; development "progressing smoothly" toward the before-2030 goal

02Mission timeline

29 May 2023
CMSA announces the lunar-landing phase: crewed landing before 2030
24 Feb 2024
Spacecraft named Mengzhou ("dream vessel"), lander named Lanyue ("embracing the Moon")
12 Feb 2025
Lunar suit named Wangyu, crew rover named Tansuo, from 9,000+ public entries
17 Jun 2025
Mengzhou zero-altitude pad abort at Jiuquan, first such Chinese test in 27 years; fully successful
6 Aug 2025
Lanyue full-scale landing-and-takeoff test at Huailai, Hebei, in an extraterrestrial-gravity simulator
15 Aug 2025
First CZ-10 static fire at Wenchang LC-301: seven YF-100K engines, ~1,000 t thrust
12 Sep 2025
Second CZ-10 static fire: 320 s with engine restarts for reusability
30 Oct 2025
CMSA: all five major flight products completed the main work of the prototype stage
11 Feb 2026
Max-Q in-flight abort at Wenchang: Mengzhou escapes about one minute into flight at roughly 10-11 km; China's first sea-based recovery of a crewed-spacecraft capsule; booster demonstrates recovery maneuvers
10 Jul 2026
CZ-10B maiden orbital flight; first stage caught in the Linghang Zhe ship's net: China's first orbital-booster recovery
Late 2026 (targeted)
CZ-10A maiden orbital flight carrying the uncrewed Mengzhou-1 to low Earth orbit (as of Jul 2026)

Teal dots: events that physically happened in flight or on the Moon. Grey: announcements, namings, contracts, and targets.

03The mission

China formally started the landing phase of its crewed lunar effort on May 29, 2023, when CMSA deputy director Lin Xiqiang announced the goal of putting Chinese astronauts on the Moon before 2030. The architecture is a dual-launch lunar-orbit rendezvous: one Long March 10 sends the Lanyue lander to lunar orbit, a second sends the crewed Mengzhou spacecraft, the two dock, two astronauts descend for a surface stay of about six hours with the Tansuo rover, then the Lanyue ascent vehicle returns them to Mengzhou for the trip home. Every element carries a poetic public-contest name: Mengzhou ("dream vessel", Feb 24, 2024), Lanyue ("embracing the Moon", from a Mao Zedong poem, same date), the Wangyu ("gazing into the cosmos") suit and Tansuo ("to explore") rover (Feb 12, 2025).

2025 was the year the hardware started flying. On June 17, 2025 a Mengzhou test capsule performed a zero-altitude pad abort at Jiuquan, China's first such test since a Shenzhou trial in 1998, landing on airbags two minutes later. On August 6, 2025 a full-scale Lanyue flew a combined landing-and-takeoff test inside a purpose-built extraterrestrial-gravity rig at Huailai, Hebei, the first Chinese trial of an off-Earth landing and ascent for a crew vehicle. At Wenchang's new LC-301 pad, a shortened CZ-10 first stage fired its seven YF-100K engines on August 15, 2025 (nearly 1,000 tonnes of thrust, the largest static fire in Chinese history) and again on September 12, 2025 for 320 seconds with restarts that rehearsed a reusable booster's flight profile. On October 30, 2025 CMSA declared the prototype stage's main work complete for all five major flight products.

The campaign accelerated in 2026. On February 11, a CZ-10A test booster lifted off from Wenchang and, about one minute in at roughly 10 to 11 km altitude, the abort system pulled Mengzhou away at maximum dynamic pressure while the booster continued a recovery-simulation profile of relights and powered deceleration, splashing down close to its recovery vessel (reports say within a few hundred meters, an unofficial figure). The capsule's parachute descent into the sea produced another first: what Global Times, quoting CASC experts and the China Manned Space Agency, called China's first sea-based search and recovery operation for a crewed spacecraft.

Then, on July 10, 2026 at 04:15 UTC, the Long March 10B, a single-stick 16-tonne-to-LEO cargo and commercial variant of the same first stage, reached orbit from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site and its booster was caught by the tensioned-net system of the Linghang Zhe ("navigator") recovery ship six minutes after staging. That made China the second country ever to recover an orbital-class booster, via the world's first net recovery, and CASC says it will refly this stage before the end of 2026. CASC has also outlined a methalox CZ-10C as a future commercial workhorse. For the lunar program, the flight validated the first-stage design shared with the crew-rated CZ-10A.

What has not happened yet, as of July 18, 2026: no CZ-10A has flown, and no crewed mission of the lunar program has launched. The next gate is Mengzhou-1, the uncrewed orbital debut of both Mengzhou and the CZ-10A, announced by CMSA on November 1, 2025 for a 2026 flight and targeted for late 2026 (as of July 2026). CMSA's February 27, 2026 annual plan keeps the before-2030 landing target and focuses 2026 work on lunar-mission ground infrastructure at Wenchang plus tracking, communications, and landing-site systems. No landing site has been officially announced, so this program page gets no globe pin yet.

04In pictures

Full-scale mockup of the Lanyue crewed lunar lander at the National Museum of China, June 2023. The flight design has evolved since this exhibit. Credit: Shujianyang (Wikimedia Commons), CC0 1.0.

Mockup of China's next-generation crewed spacecraft, now named Mengzhou, at the National Museum of China, June 2023. Credit: Shujianyang (Wikimedia Commons), CC0 1.0.

The dual-launch mission profile: separate Long March 10 launches send Lanyue and Mengzhou to lunar orbit for rendezvous. Credit: Kaynouky (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0 (share-alike).

Tap a photo to enlarge.

05Sources

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