China plans to land astronauts on the Moon before 2030, in what would be another advance in what’s increasingly seen as a new space race.
The US aims to put astronauts back on the lunar surface by the end of 2025.
Deputy director of the Chinese Manned Space Agency Lin Xiqiang confirmed China’s goal at a news conference on Monday but gave no specific date.
China is first preparing for a “short stay on the lunar surface and human-robotic joint exploration”, Mr Lin said.
“We have a complete near-Earth human space station and human round-trip transportation system,” complemented by a process for selecting, training and supporting new astronauts, he said.
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A schedule of two crewed missions a year is “sufficient for carrying out our objectives,” Mr Lin said.
China’s space agency also introduced the new crew heading to its orbiting space station in a launch scheduled for Tuesday and said the station will be expanded.
The trio being launched aboard the Shenzhou 16 craft will overlap briefly with the three astronauts who have lived on the station for the previous six months conducting experiments and assembling equipment inside and outside the vehicle.
China’s first manned space mission in 2003 made it the third country after the former Soviet Union and the US to put a person into space.
China built its own space station after it was excluded from the International Space Station, largely due to US objections over the Chinese space program’s intimate ties to the People’s Liberation Army.
In addition to their lunar programs, the US and China have also landed rovers on Mars and Beijing plans to follow the US in landing a spacecraft on an asteroid.
The US sent six crewed missions to the Moon between 1969 and 1972, three of which involved the use of a drivable lunar rover that China says it is now developing with tenders in the private sector.
