China Scraps 2026 Launch of Chang'e 7 Lunar Mission, Citing Need for "Absolute Success"
China has postponed its Chang'e 7 mission to the Moon's South Pole, announcing on Sunday that the flight cannot proceed during this year's planned launch window. The delay opens the possibility that no suitable opportunity to reach the lunar pole will arise again until February or March 2027.
The country's Manned Space program issued a terse statement offering no cause for the postponement. "In keeping with the principle of proceeding prudently and reliably, and ensuring absolute success, after a comprehensive assessment it has been determined that the Chang'e 7 mission does not meet the conditions for launch and therefore cannot be carried out during the planned launch window this year," the agency said.
The mission had been due to launch as early as Sunday on a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan island in the South China Sea. Chang'e 7 consists of a lunar orbiter, a lander, a rover, and a mini-hopper probe, and is intended to land at the South Pole near Shackleton Crater.
The most likely cause of the delay is Typhoon Narra, which carries 45-mph winds and continues to meander in the waterway separating Hainan from the Chinese mainland. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects the storm to track through the area for the next two or three days, likely bringing inclement weather to Wenchang before the current window to reach the lunar pole closes. Social media chatter, unconfirmed by official Chinese sources, suggests the next suitable window may not open until next February or March, a gap attributed to sunlight conditions in polar landing zones and a mission plan requiring a 90-day lunar orbit reconnaissance before landing.
A lesser possibility is that a last-minute technical issue was found with either the Chang'e 7 payload or the rocket. The Long March 5 shares its YF-100 engine with the Long March 7A, which was lost during ascent two weeks ago. That engine issue appears unlikely to be the cause, however, as China had been proceeding toward launch in recent days.
Chang'e 7 targets one of the most compelling regions of the Moon. The high rims of Shackleton Crater create permanently shadowed regions known as cold traps, where water ice and other useful materials are thought to have accumulated over billions of years. In both NASA and Chinese plans for long-term lunar settlement, the relatively few square miles at the South Pole matter the most. No country has softly landed a spacecraft at the lunar poles, which are more difficult to reach than equatorial regions.
The delay comes amid a tight contest between China and the United States to establish a meaningful presence at the lunar South Pole. Robotic flights such as Chang'e 7 are precursors for human missions that could follow in the next two to four years. The postponement opens the possibility that NASA could reach the terrain first, with the initial launch of Blue Origin's Blue Moon Mark 1 vehicle, which will carry two NASA probes to the South Pole.
Blue Moon was on track to launch this year before the loss of the New Glenn rocket and its launch pad at Cape Canaveral during a static fire test in May. Blue Origin is rebuilding Launch Complex 36A and aims to return New Glenn to flight before the end of this year, though that timeline is likely ambitious. Blue Moon could plausibly launch during the first half of 2027, making for a close race with Chang'e 7 if that mission flies in February and spends three months in lunar orbit before landing.