Mengzhou y Lanyue: para llevar astronautas a la Luna.
3Mengzhou and Lanyue: to take astronauts to the Moon.
China is advancing steadily and without delays towards the Moon: it will launch two separate ships with its first astronauts.
The Mengzhou orbiter and Lanyue lander will travel on two rockets.
Mengzhou will also be the first link in a future Chinese lunar station.
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) has released the names of the two spacecraft with which it hopes that two Chinese astronauts will set foot on the Moon for the first time between now and 2030.
Two ships instead of one. An orbiter called Mengzhou, which means 'dream ship' and refers to the Chinese dream of reaching the Moon.
And a lander called Lanyue, which means 'embrace the Moon'.
Mengzhou will host three astronauts who will travel from Earth to lunar orbit. Lanyue will put two of them on the surface of the Moon. He will then return them to Mengzhou, which in turn will bring them back to Earth.
The Mengzhou orbiter is based on the Chinese Tiangong-2 space station. It will serve as the first module of a future lunar orbital station that will grow with more missions, such as NASA's Gateway station.
The Lanyue lander is small and simple. It will be the predecessor of a larger and more capable lunar module that China hopes to launch in the future with a rocket under development very similar to SpaceX's Starship.
Developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the 90-meter-high Long March 10 or CZ-10 rockets will launch the Mengzhou and Lanyue spacecraft separately.
Mengzhou will be manned. The two vehicles will dock in lunar orbit and it will be there where two of the three astronauts will pass Lanyue to descend to the surface.
It will be an automatic maneuver and will put the finishing touch to a series of previous launches without landing on the moon that will occur between 2027 and 2030.
In fact, there is an increasingly real, if remote, possibility that China will put a woman on the Moon before the United States. The first Chinese moon landing is expected "between now and 2030."
If NASA's Artemis III mission, scheduled for 2026, were delayed again, or Starship development failed, China's immutable lunar program could score an unexpected coup.
So we must wait for the results of this new Chinese launch towards the moon.