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 3 Nov 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 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 v1.0.5 · All dates UTC unless a local time is shown
Analysis
- Starship Flight 15 Plans the First Ship Catch: What It Means for SpaceX, U.S. Launch and the MoonSpaceX plans to try catching both the Super Heavy booster and, for the first time, the Starship upper stage on Flight 15, targeted for no earlier than November 13. What a ship catch is, what has to go right, and what it would change for SpaceX, American launch capacity and NASA's Moon landing plans.SpaceNexus Desk · AI-drafted · 6 Nov
- China Sets Out How It Will Test Its First Crewed Moon Landing: Uncrewed and Near-Earth Flights FirstAt a symposium in Beijing on October 31, the chief designer of China's lunar exploration program set out how the first crewed landing is to be tested before astronauts fly. What is new since 2023, what was restated, how it compares with Artemis, and what it does and does not change in the race.SpaceNexus Desk · AI-drafted · 2 Nov
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. 8 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
- CN (China)Done
Wang Xiang sets out the crewed landing plan at the 7th Manned Space Symposium
Two Long March 10 launches and a docking in lunar orbit, as in 2023. A crew of three with two landing (Global Times: "我国首次载人月球探测任务乘组计划由三人组成，其中两人着陆月球表面"); a rover on the first landing (China Daily). Planning principles (CCTV, as quoted by Inside Outer Space): validate lunar-orbit tasks in near-Earth orbit "whenever possible" and "try to fly" every crewed mission uncrewed first, including an uncrewed Lanyue flight. No new dates; the target stays "before 2030".
Unconfirmed (reported but not confirmed by a primary source):- Three days on the surface with daily spacewalks, and an uncrewed end-to-end rehearsal in place of a crewed lunar-orbit Mengzhou flight: reported from the symposium slides (China in Space, 1 Nov 2026), not stated in an official text.
Sources: Xinhua, via China Economic Net (31 Oct 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 3 Nov 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 2026-11-02) [Data set]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22985974. Licensed CC BY 4.0.
BibTeX
@misc{spacenexus_moon_tracker_20261102,
author = {{SpaceNexus}},
title = {Race to the Moon: US vs China lunar tracker},
year = {2026},
version = {2026-11-02},
howpublished = {\url{https://spacenexus.us/moon}},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.22985974},
note = {Licensed CC BY 4.0},
}Version 2026-11-02: 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 (23 Oct 2026) · NASA Office of Inspector General (IG-26-004) (10 Mar 2026) · SpacePolicyOnline (22 Oct 2026) · Ars Technica (23 Oct 2026) · SpaceNews (Jul 2023) | Two Long March 10s | Not fixed: NASA has not chosen the lander. Starship: SLS plus tanker Starships that fill a depot Starship (NASA, 23 Oct 2026). Estimates of the tanker launches differ: "more than 10" (OIG, March 2026); about 22 (a member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, 22 Oct 2026); 6 to 8 (Elon Musk). NASA gave no precise number at its 23 Oct briefing; the Administrator called 6 to 8 possible but the "ultimate potential end state" of Starship (Ars Technica). Blue Moon: SLS plus four New Glenn launches (three for the transfer stages, one for the lander), with no ship-to-ship refuelling for the 2028 mission (Ars Technica, reporting NASA’s 23 Oct 2026 briefing; NASA: Blue Origin "will defer propellant transfer"). |
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.
- Alliances78 Artemis Accords signatories and the ILRS partners.
- Records and firstsWho did what first, with the definitional disputes.