FPI / April 25, 2025
Geostrategy-Direct
By Richard Fisher
Without having to respond to a free press or an inquisitive legislature, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is free to define government transparency as it pleases, usually minimally in order to deny critical insights to adversaries looking to defend themselves from CCP aggression.
This is case for much of China’s space program, which for the CCP is its principal tool for achieving superiority in space, which is necessary to enforce the CCP ambition to achieve hegemony on Earth.
But while the CCP prizes denying insights into its future military exploitation of its Moon program, it does want the world to know that the CCP will be great space power to include a major power presence on the Moon, even if that information is “unofficial” and revealed in dribbles.
A major information dribble regarding China’s manned Moon program was posted on Chinese web pages on April 18, in the form of a snip of a briefing slide that revealed: “…my country’s first lunar landing mission…it will use the Long March 10 carrier rockets number 4 and number 5, carrying a lander and a manned spacecraft respectively.”
What is being indicated for the first time, even if in an unofficial manner, is that the first three launches of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Long March-10 could be used for manned and/or unmanned testing, while the 4th and 5th launches may be designated to carry out China’s first manned mission to the Moon.
Chinese sources have indicated that this first Chinese manned Moon mission could take place as early as 2029 while most commentary has noted this first mission will take place in 2030.
Likewise, Chinese sources have suggested that testing of the Long March-10 space launch vehicle (LM-10 SLV) could begin as early as 2026; two Long March-10s will be used to transport the Lanyue Moon Lander to lunar orbit, where it will dock with the Mengzhou manned space craft, and transfer two astronauts that will descend to the Moon surface.
But if it will take five Long March-10 launches to achieve the first manned Moon mission, how will the other three launches be allocated?
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