A New Space Race: How America, China, and Russia Are Racing for the Moon and Mars

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Water frozen in the Moon’s shadows could become oxygen for astronauts and fuel for rockets. A landing can reach a promising site, but building a base means developing the systems that would let people live and work there.

America and China are competing to turn lunar missions into a lasting presence, with Russia partnering with China, while human travel to Mars remains a separate challenge. Success at the Moon would help prepare for that journey without proving a crewed Mars mission is ready.

The Moon race has several finish lines

The earlier American-Soviet space race began with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, on October 4, 1957. The final Apollo lunar mission took place in December 1972, when Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt collected samples during three moonwalks. The historical contest helps explain the appeal of another first, but repeating a visit would not by itself meet today’s goal of sustained exploration.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) still counts 12 people who have walked on the Moon. Artemis II sent four astronauts around the Moon in 2026, following the successful uncrewed Artemis I flight in late 2022. A flight around the Moon demonstrates a different capability from descending to its surface and taking off again.

China’s Chang’e-4 became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the lunar far side on January 3, 2019. In June 2024, Chang’e-6 brought back the first samples collected from that far side. On those measures, China has achieved milestones that a count of American astronauts would miss. There is no useful single leader unless the finish line is specified: crewed flight, robotic exploration and maintaining a base ask different things of a program.

NASA missions have found evidence of water ice and other frozen materials in some permanently shadowed polar regions, with uneven distribution and concentrations. Water molecules could be broken apart to provide oxygen to breathe and fuel for rockets. That possibility changes the value of a lunar destination: a place to study might also become a source of supplies for future operations. Finding ice, however, does not establish that a usable supply has been mapped or that extracting it will work at the scale a base needs.

Near the lunar south pole, the Sun stays low on the horizon, and terrain creates areas with extended sunlight alongside long-lasting or permanent shadows. A promising resource site and a suitable place to operate are therefore separate questions. The same polar conditions that help preserve frozen material also complicate the choice of where to build and how to keep equipment working.

America is testing the pieces before a landing

Artemis I tested NASA’s rocket, spacecraft and supporting ground systems without a crew, traveling beyond the Moon and returning to Earth in late 2022. The Artemis II crew in 2026 included NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The progression from an uncrewed flight to a crewed flight matters because sending a working vehicle is not the same undertaking as bringing people safely home. The next tests must join those transportation systems to the equipment needed for a surface expedition.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket carries the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis lunar flights. The European Space Agency (ESA) supplies Orion’s European Service Module, providing life support, power and propulsion. NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin on landers intended to carry astronauts down to the surface, support a temporary stay and return them to lunar orbit. The spacecraft that takes the crew toward the Moon and the vehicle that takes them to the ground have different jobs. Success depends on those jobs fitting together, including the transfer between vehicles.

NASA’s updated sequence calls for Artemis III to test systems in low Earth orbit in 2027, preparing for an Artemis IV lunar landing in 2028. The planned Artemis III work includes rendezvous and docking with one or both commercial landers, along with tests of life support, communications, propulsion and spacesuits. That flight should therefore be judged as a test of the route to a landing, rather than as the landing itself. Both dates remain targets dependent on tests and hardware.

NASA’s inspector general reports that both lander providers have faced schedule delays, technical difficulties and integration challenges that could affect delivery timelines. An announced date cannot resolve a development problem; the relevant evidence is whether the required system has passed its tests. This is why a successful crewed lunar flight and an unfinished lander can coexist within the same program.

Gateway is a planned space station in lunar orbit, with an initial stage combining power and propulsion equipment with a habitat for astronauts. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), NASA announced in March 2026 that it intended to pause Gateway’s initial capability and focus on infrastructure for sustained lunar surface operations. The agency also planned to repurpose applicable Gateway hardware and use existing international partner commitments for future efforts. The change redirects the architecture toward the ground, rather than making the old Gateway sequence a reliable guide to what comes next.

Congress provides NASA’s public funding through appropriations, which set aside money for the agency. NASA uses that funding to pay for contracts, including commercial services that deliver scientific instruments to the Moon.

NASA’s inspector general, in the June 2024 audit NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative, describes goals of rapid, affordable and frequent lunar deliveries and developing a robust lunar delivery industry. Under Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), NASA buys end-to-end delivery, including payload integration, mission operations, launch from Earth and landing on the Moon. Commercial vendors design the landers and procure their launch vehicles, taking on much of the responsibility and risk of delivery. The point is to buy a delivery service and help a market develop, rather than have NASA closely control every mission itself. Affordability and frequency are objectives of that model, rather than guaranteed outcomes of awarding a contract.

China and Russia share a station plan, with different records

China is targeting a crewed lunar landing by 2030. Its far-side landing and sample return give that ambition a substantial robotic record, but neither achievement demonstrates a system that can land and return astronauts.

China and Russia signed a memorandum on cooperation for the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) in March 2021 and subsequently released a roadmap inviting other partners. The station is planned as a scientific facility on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit, with a basic south-pole model by 2035 and an expanded model in the 2040s. A joint roadmap describes an intended partnership, rather than proving that every partner can independently reach the Moon or supply the same hardware.

Reuters reported on August 20, 2023 that Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashed after a problem preparing for its pre-landing orbit.

Roscosmos, Russia’s state space corporation, said in December 2025 that it had contracted with NPO Lavochkin to develop a lunar power station by 2036. The proposed station would supply long-term power to Russian lunar rovers and observatories and to infrastructure for the international research station. Roscosmos’s plan includes spacecraft development, ground testing, flight tests and deployment of infrastructure on the Moon.

On August 24, 2026, Thailand’s National Astronomical Research Institute reported that China’s Chang’e-7 launch had been postponed to 2027. The institute said that, after a typhoon delayed the planned launch, the mission’s lighting requirements for its destination near the lunar south pole could no longer be met in the remaining 2026 windows. The delay illustrates why a launch date is also a choice about conditions at the destination, rather than simply a slot on a calendar. Environmental constraints can change a mission’s schedule even when its scientific purpose remains intact.

More countries participate than land spacecraft

Five national programs have achieved successful soft landings on the Moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan. Here, a soft landing means a controlled touchdown, rather than a spacecraft striking the surface. That count answers a question about demonstrated landing capability, not how many nations have a stake in exploration.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 landed on August 23, 2023, making India the fourth country to land on the Moon and the first to land near its southern polar region. Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) landed on January 20, 2024, Japan time, reaching the surface approximately 55 meters east of its target. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) reported that the way the craft came to rest initially prevented its solar cells from generating power. Japan’s result shows why even the word successful needs context: reaching a chosen site and having every system operate as planned are different measures.

San Marino became the 76th nation to sign the Artemis Accords on September 25, 2026. The Accords concern shared principles for exploration, so that total should not be mistaken for a fleet of countries racing their own landers to the Moon. In April 2025, China’s government site reported that 17 countries and international organizations, plus more than 50 research institutions, had joined the ILRS effort. Those categories are different from the Accords’ count of nations, making a numerical comparison between the coalitions misleading.

Participation can mean carrying a crew member, supplying a spacecraft component, delivering scientific instruments or agreeing on operating principles. A nation does not need its own landing vehicle to influence what gets studied or how exploration works. The race is consequently wider than the three countries in its headline, without every participant being a direct rival for the same milestone.

A base is not a colony, and Mars is another challenge

NASA’s phased Moon Base plan begins with small-scale technology demonstrations and experiments, then builds toward the capabilities required for continuous habitation. It calls for shared infrastructure for power, logistics, communications and navigation. In this context, a base is a place to conduct and support exploration; a self-sustaining colony would have to do much more than host a scientific expedition. The plans for NASA’s base and the China-Russia research station should be evaluated as staged infrastructure projects, rather than evidence that a functioning colony has been established.

NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture is an annually evolving framework intended to connect lunar exploration with its objectives for Mars. The Moon Base architecture guide presents lunar research, technology and infrastructure investments as support for future human exploration of Mars. A lunar base would offer a place to develop operating capabilities, but proving a system at the Moon would not automatically establish that it is ready for a Mars expedition.

China’s Tianwen-1 lander, carrying a rover, touched down on Mars on May 15, 2021. China plans to launch Tianwen-3 around 2028 and return Martian samples around 2031 if the mission goes according to plan. Sample return would be an important exploration achievement, but a robotic mission does not have to keep astronauts alive during its journey. A race for Martian samples and a race to land people on Mars therefore have different finish lines.

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center describes SpaceX developing Starship/Super Heavy with the goal of traveling to the Moon and Mars. That commercial ambition is separate from NASA’s contracts for a lunar lander, and neither should be read as a commitment to establish a Mars colony on a fixed date. America has a human Mars exploration objective, but a company’s long-term destination does not determine the government’s mission sequence or funding.

NASA identifies radiation exposure, changing gravity, isolation, distance from Earth and surface environmental factors as linked risks for astronauts on Mars missions. The human challenge is not simply choosing a bigger rocket: the mission must also protect the people it sends. For now, the concrete comparison is between lunar flight and landing programs, robotic Mars achievements and the capabilities being developed for future crewed exploration.

Leadership includes the rules for operating there

Article II of the Outer Space Treaty bars countries from claiming the Moon or other celestial bodies through sovereignty, use or occupation. Getting there first therefore does not turn the landing site into national territory. Article VI makes states responsible for their national space activities, including those of private entities, which require state authorization and continuing supervision. Private companies do not remove governments from the legal relationship simply by operating the spacecraft themselves.

The Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act of 2015 recognizes a US citizen’s right to resources obtained through commercial space extraction, subject to applicable law. The same law says its enactment does not assert US sovereignty, exclusive rights, jurisdiction or ownership over a celestial body. The distinction is between owning extracted material and owning the place it came from.

The Artemis Accords support resource extraction consistent with the Outer Space Treaty and call for public information about operations to help avoid harmful interference. Their operational safety zones are temporary, end when the relevant operation ceases and must respect other countries’ access. The Outer Space Treaty also requires countries to take other countries’ corresponding interests into account when conducting space activities. A safety arrangement for equipment and crews is therefore different from a claim to permanently exclude other countries. The practical question is how separate expeditions can use nearby sites without disrupting one another’s work.

Building a coalition can help turn operating principles into shared expectations, while supplying hardware makes cooperation concrete. This gives the contest a diplomatic dimension alongside its rockets: participation shapes whose systems and practices other explorers work with. The lasting test of leadership will be whether missions can keep working, support the next expedition and coexist with other users of the Moon. The next flag is an event; reliable capability is what would give that event a future.