Mission

Chang'e-7

China's mission to the Moon's south pole, with an orbiter, a lander and a craft built to fly into shadowed craters, to search for water ice.

Chang'e-7 is a China National Space Administration (CNSA) mission to the Moon's south pole.[1] It is to survey the surface environment there, including water ice and other volatile substances in the lunar soil, and to study the region's terrain, composition and structure.[1]

Why the south pole

The south pole is likely to have long periods of sunlight, giving steady power and more stable temperatures for long-term robotic exploration.[2] Elsewhere on the Moon, temperatures swing by about 300 °C between lunar day and night.[2] The permanently shadowed craters near the pole may hold ice and other volatile compounds, valuable resources for future crewed exploration.[2]

The mission

To reach those craters, engineers are developing a craft able to fly from the landing site into a nearby crater to look for traces of water.[2] In 2024, CNSA described the mission as scheduled for launch around 2026.[1]

Chang'e-7 is to carry six instruments from six countries and one international organization.[1] They include laser retroreflectors from Italy and a lunar dust and electric field instrument from Russia on the lander, a telescope from the International Lunar Observatory Association, and a hyperspectral camera from Egypt and Bahrain on the orbiter.[1] A Swiss and Chinese spectrometer on the orbiter is to measure, for the first time from the Moon, the radiation entering and leaving Earth's climate system.[1]

NASA's crewed return to the Moon is described on the Artemis IV page.

Milestones

  1. In 2026 expected
    Launch on Long March 5

Dates marked expected are agency estimates.

All missions and what each does next

Sources

  1. [1]China National Space Administration, China's Chang'e-7 lunar mission to carry instruments developed through int'l cooperation — cnsa.gov.cn, retrieved October 26, 2026
  2. [2]China National Space Administration, Chang'e 7 robotic mission to search for ice and survey south pole landforms — cnsa.gov.cn, retrieved October 26, 2026

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