In the 21st century space race, the contest to reach the Moon feels less like the Cold War and more like Wacky Races.
While the showdown to return astronauts to the Moon has pitted the United States and China against one another, the long-term vision of humanity’s sustained presence on the lunar surface is a truly global affair. This chapter of lunar history is marked by dozens of nations working in cooperation and/or competition within two international blocs: the Artemis program, and the much smaller International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
In the red corner: ILRS was cofounded by China and Russia in 2021, and now represents a consortium of 13 nations including Belarus, Pakistan, Egypt, and South Africa. (ILRS members Thailand and Senegal are also part of the NASA-led Artemis Accords.)
The goals of ILRS are to rely on Chinese and Russian launch and landing capabilities to reach the lunar surface, and to set up a web of permanent research, mining, and astronaut habitation infrastructure.
Since the creation of ILRS, the China National Space Administration and Russia’s Roscosmos have had varied success on lunar missions:
- In 2023, Russia’s Luna-25 mission to the Moon—the country’s first since 1976, under the Soviet Union—crash-landed on the lunar surface.
- Last year, China’s Chang’e-6 mission sent a lunar probe to the far side of the Moon, and returned lunar regolith back to Earth.
Between now and 2030, Russia and China have at least four missions bound for the Moon:
- China’s Chang’e-7 mission is expected to launch in 2026 aboard a Long March 5 rocket and head for the lunar south pole. Once there, it will deploy a “hopper” lunar explorer that will use an image-based navigation system to identify landmarks, and traverse the surface largely without input from controllers on Earth.
- Luna-26, Russia’s next lunar mission, aims to send an orbiter to the Moon in 2028 to map lunar topography, study the distribution of water ice, and serve as a communications relay for future missions to the surface.
- China’s Change’e-8 mission is expected to launch to the Moon in 2029 to continue the work of Chang’e-7, and begin investigating a site for future ILRS infrastructure.
- The Luna-27 mission will launch two spacecraft aiming to bring Russian landers to the lunar north and south poles. The first of those is expected to fly in 2029.
On these missions, members of the international community are contributing payloads and components to bolster China and Russia’s capabilities once on the Moon. For instance, Egypt and Bahrain are jointly developing a hyperspectral imagery payload on China’s Chang’e-7 mission to search for water ice on the Moon’s south pole.
Chang’e-8 will fly payloads from 11 countries, including a robot from Hong Kong, rovers from Pakistan and Turkey, radio instruments from South Africa and Peru, and retroreflector arrays from Italy.
While preparations for these uncrewed missions continue, China is ramping up development of its own hardware to bring crews to the lunar surface, all in an effort to beat the US return to the Moon by 2030. On this front, China has begun initial development of its Long March 10 superheavy rocket, its Lanyue lunar lander, and a spacesuit capable of withstanding the lunar surface. Lanyuer recently demonstrated a test landing that sparked debate over whether the Chinese were on track to beat the US to the Moon.
The West Side Story: The US-led Artemis program is pursuing a similar rollout on the lunar surface, but with more immediate focus on putting humans in the loop.
First up is Artemis II, which is launching as early as February to bring a crew of four astronauts (three from the US, and one from Canada) to orbit the Moon. After that, Artemis III aims to bring astronauts to the surface. Artemis III, now planned to launch as early as mid-2027, was flagged as potentially behind that timeline this week when NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory panel warned that SpaceX’s Starship would be unprepared to bring humans to the Moon by then.
And like ILRS, many of the elements of the Artemis program depend on international support, and the combined work of the 56 countries who have signed onto the Accords. Some of those nations aim to contribute hardware to the Moon, while others are in the Accords for varying policy reasons.
One of these missions, Gateway, is a prime example of how much the US race to the Moon depends on international support. The aim of Gateway is to act something like a lunar ISS, by orbiting the Moon in a highly elliptical orbit where it can host astronauts before their final descent to the lunar surface. Gateway was very nearly cancelled by the Trump administration’s initial FY 2026 NASA budget proposal, but saved by the Senate at the last second.
Like the ISS, Gateway depends on work from a range of international space agencies, including:
- The Canadian Space Agency, which is providing its Canadarm3 robotic arm.
- The European Space Agency, which is developing one module where astronauts can work and live, another module to house refueling and cargo needs, and the Lunar Link communications tech.
- The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which is developing components of the astronauts’ living quarters, items such as batteries to power the station, and a cargo spacecraft for resupply missions.
- The Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre from the UAE is developing an airlock to permit crew and scientific transfers.
The bottom line: While the race to the Moon is often billed as a one-on-one fight between the US and China to win the title of the dominant space faring nation, the reality is much more nuanced.
The entire international community may rely on US, Chinese, and Russian launch and landing systems to reach the Moon, but the creation of future lunar bases orbiting the Moon and on the lunar surface will depend on the international cooperation these nations can foster.
It’s a relay, not a sprint.
