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China has scheduled its Chang'e-7 lunar mission for launch on 24 August 2026 from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in Hainan, aboard a Long March 5 Y14 rocket.
The China National Space Administration describes the spacecraft as a four-in-one system - an orbiter, a lander, a rover and a hopping probe.
The lander is to touch down near the edge of Shackleton Crater at the lunar south pole and search for signs of water ice; the hopping probe will jump into permanently shadowed craters to analyse water molecules.
The mission carries six scientific payloads contributed by six countries and one international organisation, and will communicate through the Queqiao-2 relay satellite launched in March 2024.
Chang'e-7 follows Chang'e-4, the first soft landing on the lunar far side in 2019, and Chang'e-6, which returned the first far-side samples in 2024.
The Moon's axis is tilted only about 1.5 degrees to the plane of its orbit around the Sun, so at the poles the Sun never rises far above the horizon. The floors of deep polar craters therefore never receive direct sunlight at all, and temperatures inside them can stay below about minus 200 degrees Celsius. At those temperatures volatiles - water ice above all - can survive for billions of years instead of subliming away. That makes the polar PSRs both a scientific archive of the inner Solar System's water and the most plausible source of drinking water, breathable oxygen and rocket propellant for any future lunar base, which is why almost every major space power is now aiming at the same small region.
Simple Analogy: Like the deep-freeze at the back of a cellar that the sun has never reached - whatever was put there long ago is still frozen solid.
Chang'e-4 makes the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, in Von Karman crater inside the South Pole-Aitken Basin, and deploys the Yutu-2 rover
Chang'e-5 returns lunar samples from the near side, China's first sample-return mission
Queqiao-2 relay satellite launched to support far-side and polar communications for Chang'e-6, -7 and -8
Chang'e-6 lands in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side
Chang'e-6 returns 1,935.3 grams of far-side lunar samples to Earth - a world first
Chang'e-7 scheduled for launch towards the lunar south pole
China's lunar programme is named after Chang'e, the moon goddess of Chinese mythology; its rovers are named Yutu, the jade rabbit of the same legend.
Because the far side never faces Earth, China placed the Queqiao and Queqiao-2 relay satellites in position to pass signals between Earth and spacecraft on the far side and at the poles.
The largest, deepest and oldest known impact basin on the Moon, spanning much of the far-side southern hemisphere; both Chang'e-4 and Chang'e-6 worked inside it.
Chang'e-7 and the planned Chang'e-8 are stepping stones towards the China-led International Lunar Research Station at the lunar south pole.
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A crater floor near a lunar pole that never receives direct sunlight because of the Moon's very small axial tilt, allowing water ice to persist.
A prominent impact crater at the Moon's south pole, a leading candidate site for water-ice detection and future landings.
A small craft that moves by leaping rather than rolling, allowing it to enter steep or shadowed terrain a rover cannot reach.
China's lunar relay satellite launched on 20 March 2024 to carry signals between Earth and spacecraft on the Moon's far side and at its poles.
The largest, deepest and oldest known impact basin on the Moon, on the far side; the site of the Chang'e-4 landing and the Chang'e-6 sampling.