US vs China · Moon race tracker
Race to the Moon: who is closer to landing people there, and staying?
Who is winning the race to the Moon, China or the US? As of 24 Sep 2026, United States leads on demonstrated milestones toward a crewed landing (China 1.75, United States 3.5, out of 8 rungs; a lead needs a full rung). The two are level on demonstrated milestones toward a permanent presence (China 1.25, United States 1, out of 8 rungs; a lead needs a full rung). Who lands people first is too close to call: under the published rule a country is projected first only if its window ends before the other’s begins in every scenario, and that is not the case today.
Official targets: China, before 2030 (2030年前); United States, 2028 (NASA target: early 2028) with Artemis IV. More answers
Level on demonstrated milestones · China 1.25 · United States 1 of 8
- Built = 1 · Complete (drawn solid, detailed and lit)
- Under construction = ½ · Flown, short of the criterion (drawn lower half built, scaffolding and a crane)
- Blueprint = ¼ · Integrated ground or atmospheric test (drawn dashed outline on a grid)
- Ghost footprint = 0 · Planned (drawn faint dotted footprint)
Level on demonstrated milestones (China 1.25 · United States 1 of 8). Crewed-landing projection: Too close to call. Illustration: positions are schematic. Each site stands for a programme; partners’ assets count toward the programme whose architecture includes them. Select any structure for its evidence.
View the scene as a table
| Rung | China · ILRS | United States · Artemis |
|---|---|---|
| P1 South-polar robotic landing (Robotic lander) | ¼: Integrated ground or atmospheric test (blueprint) | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) |
| P2 Dedicated lunar relay (Relay satellite) | 1: Complete (built) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| P3 ISRU demonstrated on the Moon (Resource plant (ISRU)) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) |
| P4 Power through the lunar night (Night power unit) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| P5 Crew-capable surface habitat (Pressurised habitat) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| P6 Cadence (Two crew landing pads) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| P7 30-day crewed stay (Crew, rover and tracks) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| P8 Continuous presence, one year (Outpost beacon (crewed all year)) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| L1 Landing launchers reach orbit | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) |
| L2 Crew vehicle: uncrewed lunar round trip | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) | 1: Complete (built) |
| L3 Crew beyond low Earth orbit | ¼: Integrated ground or atmospheric test (blueprint) | 1: Complete (built) |
| L4 Crew lander flown in space | ¼: Integrated ground or atmospheric test (blueprint) | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) |
| L5 Critical in-space operations | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | ½: Flown, short of the criterion (under construction) |
| L6 Uncrewed landing by the crew lander | ¼: Integrated ground or atmospheric test (blueprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| L7 Lunar surface suit flown | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| L8 Crewed landing | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) | 0: Planned (ghost footprint) |
| Totals | Moon base 1.25 of 8 · Crewed landing 1.75 of 8 | Moon base 1 of 8 · Crewed landing 3.5 of 8 |
A neutral tracker of the United States and China, built on a published method, beside a catalogue of every lunar mission since the first attempts of 1958. It separates two questions: who has demonstrated more of the hardware, and who is projected to land first. Every rung, date and number links to its source.
Data reviewed against sources as of · Tracker method v1.0.3 · All dates UTC unless a local time is shown
Subscribe in your calendar (every Moon mission launch): Apple or OutlookGoogleDownload .icsCalendar entries move when launch times move. A launch known only to the month appears once it has a day.
Demonstrated milestones
Two ladders of eight verifiable rungs each. A rung scores 0, ¼, ½ or 1 by the kind of evidence; all rungs weigh the same. Tap any cell for its evidence. China is on the left and the United States on the right (alphabetical). How the tracker works.
Planned (0)Ground-tested (¼)Flown, short (½)Done (1)CN · China (dotted)US · United States (hatched)
Crewed landing
At least one person on the lunar surface, returned to Earth alive.
United States leads on demonstrated milestones (China 1.75 · United States 3.5 of 8; a lead needs a full rung)
When? Projected crewed-landing windows
Each official target, stretched by the programme’s own record of meeting dated promises. Published rule: a country is “projected first” only if its window ends before the other’s begins in every published scenario.
Too close to call
Headline scenario (lunar + human-spaceflight record, remaining-horizon model): bands overlap. 7 of 12 scenarios give the same call; the rest are listed on the method page. Low confidence.
What’s next (next 90 days)
Dated items from our data whose window falls in the next 90 days, plus lunar missions on the live launch schedule.
2026
- CN (China)Scheduled
Mengzhou-1: uncrewed debut on Long March 10A, docking at Tiangong
Official plan: 2026 (CMSA mission-patch notices, Oct/Nov 2025). Not in CMSA’s February 2026 annual plan; in May CMSA spoke of verifying the Earth-orbit system "over the next two years through multiple space-station flights".
Unconfirmed (reported but not confirmed by a primary source):- A slip to 2027: China in Space’s inference from an upper stage entering service in Q1 2027, not an official statement.
- A report that the Long March 10A debut will instead carry a lunar "space-time reference satellite".
Sources: China Manned Space Agency (CMSE site) (28 Oct 2025) · China Manned Space Agency (CMSE site) (26 Nov 2025)
Latest changes
What happened in the last 60 days, newest first.
2026
- US (United States)Done
Starship Flight 14: the first Starship to reach orbit
"Splashdown confirmed ... the first orbital flight of Starship" (SpaceX, 28 Sep 2026). Liftoff time from Launch Library 2.
SpaceX reports that the ship entered orbit, deployed all 26 Starlink V3 satellites it carried (all in contact), then made a deorbit burn and splashed down in the Pacific after about 3 hours in orbit; the booster splashed down in the Gulf. The first 13 flights were all suborbital. The ship was Starlink-configured, a variant of the family, so reaching orbit does not move rung L1 on its own (method v1.0.3).
Sources: SpaceX on X (28 Sep 2026) · SpaceX on X (28 Sep 2026) · Space.com (updated 17 Sep 2026)
Questions people ask
Who is winning the race to the Moon, China or the US?
The tracker scores crewed landing and permanent presence separately. As of 24 Sep 2026: United States leads on demonstrated milestones toward a crewed landing (China 1.75, United States 3.5, out of 8 rungs; a lead needs a full rung). The two are level on demonstrated milestones toward a permanent presence (China 1.25, United States 1, out of 8 rungs; a lead needs a full rung). Who lands people first is too close to call: under the published rule a country is projected first only if its window ends before the other’s begins in every scenario, and that is not the case today.
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<iframe src="https://spacenexus.us/embed/moon-race" width="100%" height="330" style="border:0;max-width:560px" title="Race to the Moon: US vs China tracker (SpaceNexus)" loading="lazy"></iframe>
The card shows both ladders, the projection call and the official targets, and updates when the tracker does. Data licence: CC BY 4.0.
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Licence: this data is published under CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International). Use it, share it and adapt it, commercially too, with credit to SpaceNexus and a link. It is our own compilation from the public sources linked on every row; quoted statements and those sources remain their owners’, and the illustrations are not part of the dataset.
Suggested citation
SpaceNexus. (2026). Race to the Moon: US vs China lunar tracker (Version 2026-09-24) [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22985974. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
BibTeX
@misc{spacenexus_moon_tracker_20260924,
author = {{SpaceNexus}},
title = {Race to the Moon: US vs China lunar tracker},
year = {2026},
version = {2026-09-24},
howpublished = {\url{https://spacenexus.us/moon}},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22985974},
note = {Licensed CC BY 4.0},
}Version 2026-09-24: the date the data was last reviewed against its sources. Persistent identifier: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22985974.
Context (shown, never scored)
| Item | China | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Launches per landing Sources: NASA Office of Inspector General (IG-26-004) (10 Mar 2026) · Spaceflight Now (10 Mar 2026) · SpaceNews (Jul 2023) | Two Long March 10s | SLS plus "more than 10 Starship tankers" (OIG; Spaceflight Now says 10 to 20) |
| Published lunar budget Sources: SpacePolicyOnline (3 Apr 2026) · The Planetary Society (24 Mar 2026) |
Explore
- United StatesArtemis, the landers, Moon Base, CLPS and the policy behind them.
- ChinaChang’e, Long March 10, Mengzhou, Lanyue and the ILRS.
- All 173 missions141 flown or attempted since 1958, plus 32 planned, postponed, paused or cancelled. Filter and download as CSV.
- TimelineEvery dated step, past and planned, in one list.
- Alliances75 Artemis Accords signatories and the ILRS partners.
- Records and firstsWho did what first, with the definitional disputes.