China plans to build a base on the moon

The initial roadmap for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), a joint venture between China and Russia, was announced in June 2021. The two countries have announced plans to build a basic, robotic lunar base through five super-heavy rocket launches between 2030 and 2035.

China has now taken the lead on the project and revealed a more advanced two-stage plan for the ILRS at the Second International Deep Space Exploration Conference in Anhui Province, China on September 5.

The first phase will be completed around 2035 near the lunar south pole, and an expanded model will be built around 2050, Wu Yanhua, chief designer of China’s deep space exploration project, told media at the event.

The expanded model will be “a station network using the lunar orbit as the center and the south pole station as the main base, and it will include exploration points on the lunar equator and the far side of the moon,” Xinhua quoted Wu as saying.

Other details include the ILRS being powered by solar, radioisotope and nuclear power plants. The next infrastructure will be a lunar-ground communications network and a high-speed surface communications network, and lunar vehicles such as a jump ship, a long-range unmanned vehicle and a manned rover.

The chief designer also claimed that the expanded ILRS model would help lay the groundwork for future manned landings on Mars.

China has been courting partners for ILRS. Senegal became the 13th country to join the project at the conference. Meanwhile, NASA is leading Artemis, a parallel but separate program to return humans to the Moon. Both China and NASA aim to land astronauts on the Moon by the end of the decade.