Who gets there first. China and the United States on the way to the Moon

Beijing announces it will move up its timetable. Washington has few certainties. At stake are not only primacy and prestige, but also the chance to set the rules in the next extraterrestrial game.

BY EMILIO COZZI e MATTEO MARINI

The road to the Moon has never been so crowded. After decades of silence broken only by a few sporadic experiments, in recent years our natural satellite has returned to the center of global attention. And while the first lunar race, in the 1960s, was an ideological duel between two superpowers, today it is taking shape as a global, fragmented, competitive affair. And, above all, a far more complex one. Because behind every lander there is not just a scientific experiment, but a web of economic interests, strategic alliances, industrial ambitions, and military potential. The main players are once again the West and the East, with China taking the place of the Soviet Union.

Just to give a few examples of the interest surrounding it, Japan wrote an important chapter with the SLIM mission, which for the first time demonstrated the ability to land on the lunar surface with almost surgical precision. The Japanese probe touched down just a few meters from its designated target, a detail that in such a hostile and uneven environment as the Moon is anything but minor. Meanwhile, India successfully completed the Chandrayaan 3 mission, achieving a landing in the south pole region, an area of enormous interest due to the possible presence of water ice. The milestone also carried symbolic weight: India became the first nation to reach that zone, proving its technological capabilities as a “major space power.”

The Uncertainties of the United States

The United States, for its part, is following an unprecedented strategy: instead of carrying out each mission solely within the institutional framework, it has launched a program — the Clps, Commercial Lunar Payload Services — involving private companies. Among these, Firefly Aerospace deserves mention, having landed its Blue Ghost lander on the lunar surface: the first private mission to achieve this milestone.

On board was also the LuGRE payload, developed by the Italian Space Agency and Qascom, which successfully tested the possibility of satellite-based positioning around the Moon, even using Gnss signals (Gps and Galileo in particular). A tricolor piece in the vast lunar puzzle.

Meanwhile, Washington is moving forward with the “mother” program, Artemis, which, however, reveals uncertainties tied to decisions made during the Trump administration and has not progressed linearly. After a Nasa budget proposal from the White House suggested significant cuts to the transportation system, the Space Launch System (Sls), the crew capsule Orion, in which Europe is also involved, and the lunar orbital station Gateway, to which European and Italian contributions are crucial, the administration reversed course. The Big Beautiful Bill Act allocated 10 billion dollars to support projects that were threatened with cancellation.

The outcome, still far from finalized, underscores that the United States has not yet determined exactly how it will return astronauts to the Moon. Sls and Orion allow for a dual approach, one using a “classic” lander modeled after the one Blue Origin is designing, with four legs, or SpaceX’s approach with a reusable shuttle that lands and takes off vertically.

In both cases, the mission architecture still involves a transfer from Orion, with which astronauts would launch from Cape Canaveral atop an Sls, to the module that descends to the Moon. Initially, the White House intended to abandon this method as soon as possible in favor of a private vehicle. Starship represents the first candidate. Progress on Musk’s spacecraft, even after the successful test in August, has been slow and uncertain. Starship has not yet reached orbit and clearly still requires extensive work. Although nothing is official, it seems unlikely that a human mission could be ready by 2027. The end of the decade, therefore by 2030, represents a more realistic projection.

China Enchanted by the Moon, “Chinese Garden”

To date, China has perhaps achieved the most significant milestones. In 2024, the Chang’e-6 mission, completed in June, reached and collected samples from the far side of the Moon, demonstrating increasingly sophisticated technological mastery. Quietly but with determination, Beijing is securing a central role in the future lunar economy.

And it has accelerated. Considerably. Recently, it tested for the first time the escape flight system, which ensures emergency separation in the moments following launch, for what is expected to be the capsule dedicated to transporting taikonauts to lunar orbit. Beijing has announced plans to move up the debut of the Long March 10 from 2027 to 2026, albeit in a lighter configuration. It is an updated version of the Long March 5 and, at full capacity, can carry 70 tons to low Earth orbit and 27 tons to lunar transfer orbit, performance comparable to Starship.

China’s ambition is to beat the United States to the Moon. The goal is to land in time for the eightieth anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, in 2029.

“After our astronauts reach the Moon, our people will move there and live there sooner or later. We will chat and have fun on the Moon, treating that place as our home garden,” are the euphoric predictions of the local press. It is worth noting that while Beijing declares it wants to shorten the timeline, America is extending it. The original intention was to land “the first woman and the first person of color” on the Moon by 2024, three objectives all contradicted by reality and by the intentions of the new administration.

Who Gets There First

At the heart of the growing excitement is not just science. Certainly, the research objectives are significant, but the lunar south pole could contain reserves of water ice useful for producing fuel and supporting future human settlements, as well as valuable elements for terrestrial technologies. The Moon is also, and above all, a strategic platform, a potential hub for more distant missions, such as those to Mars, and a powerful geopolitical symbol. Physical presence in space, now more than ever, equals power. Being there means having influence, setting the rules, establishing technological standards, and exercising authority.

In this context, very clear alliance blocs are emerging. On one side, there is an “American” aggregation structured around the Artemis Accords, international principles of conduct promoted by Nasa and signed by more than fifty countries, including Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Australia, and much of Europe. This regulatory framework supports the Artemis program, which aims to return humans to the Moon and build a permanent settlement through the Lunar Gateway orbital station. The next steps include Artemis II, which will carry astronauts into lunar orbit, and Artemis III, which is expected to achieve the long-awaited return to the surface.

On the other side is the Sino-Russian bloc, which announced the ILRS (International Lunar Research Station), an automated scientific base to be built by 2035 with the support of Asian, African, and South American countries such as Pakistan, Venezuela, and South Africa. The alliance positions itself as an alternative to U.S. hegemony, but it follows similar logic: building technological capacity, strengthening strategic partnerships, and occupying a space—both physical and political—in a territory still without rulers.

In between are actors such as India, which prefers a position of equidistance, collaborating with NASA but without binding itself too tightly, and countries like the United Arab Emirates, which are investing to become a global hub for commercial space.

Follow the Money

The Moon also represents an economic issue. Getting anything there is very costly. According to estimates, the Artemis program alone could exceed ninety billion dollars by the end of 2026. However, the novelty of recent years is that space is no longer an exclusively public endeavor. With Clps, Nasa has adopted an “as a service” model, entrusting private companies with operational tasks such as transporting scientific payloads. American companies like Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly Aerospace have become active partners in lunar exploration, reducing costs and multiplying opportunities.

Europe is also taking its first steps in this direction. Esa, the continental space agency, has in the pipeline the Argonaut lander and the Lunar Pathfinder mission, a kind of first telecommunications node in lunar orbit that will see participation from Italian companies such as Telespazio, Airbus Italia, and Qascom. The idea is to build autonomous capabilities in order not to be left out of an emerging economy that, although still in its infancy, could be worth billions in the near future.

One question remains, in many respects crucial: can we really speak of a “lunar economy”? At the moment, direct economic returns are limited. Lunar surface resources, such as water or regolith, are interesting but still too complex to extract and convert into value. Lunar tourism is far from reality, as shown for example by the DearMoon mission, purchased by Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and later canceled.

The real opportunities today lie in the development of critical infrastructure: telecommunications, navigation, logistics, and artificial intelligence for extreme environments. Those investing now are doing so with a long-term horizon, aiming to position themselves in a market that does not yet exist but that one day could become essential.

Follow the Law

Not secondary is also the question of law. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty establishes that no country can claim sovereignty over a celestial body. In practice, however, whoever lands first and installs sensors, robots, and instruments will tend to consider that area as their own.

The Artemis Accords introduce the concept of “safety zones” around outposts: areas of respect, theoretically non-sovereign, but functioning as exclusive spaces. China and Russia do not recognize them.

In other words, today there is no international body capable of managing disputes or regulating competing uses of the same area. This is the risk of extraterrestrial “lawfare”: a legal clash, not yet military, that could nonetheless have significant and lasting consequences.

The Moon is a testing ground. It reflects our terrestrial dynamics: competition, diplomacy, business, technology, and law. But it could also become something more: a laboratory to test new models of cooperation or, conversely, a stage where tensions between blocs intensify.

One thing is certain: we are already in the second lunar race, with new rules and different actors. What remains to be seen is who will truly stay there, and under what conditions.