China’s chief designer of the manned space program, Zhou Jianping, has revealed details of the country’s rocket for its moon landing mission. The mission will involve two separate flights, one for a manned spaceship and the other for a lander. The spaceship will send taikonauts to lunar orbit and dock with the lunar lander, which will then carry the taikonauts to the moon’s surface. The lander’s ascender will lift the taikonauts back into lunar orbit to rejoin the spaceship before returning to Earth. The mission will require a larger carrying capacity than crewed space station flights, with a delivery capacity of around 130-140 tonnes, 30-40% larger than needed to launch the whole Chinese space station combination. Zhou is confident that China will achieve its goal of landing people on the moon by 2030 and bringing them back safely to Earth.
