China Says It Already Has A Rocket For Landing Humans On The Moon

The relentless efforts of scientists and researchers has provided us with a remarkable opportunity of colonizing space. They have made it more accessible and have normalized the discourse of space travel and tourism. In order to facilitate these missions and objectives, they have built and manufactured spacecrafts and rockets. China, the USA, and Russia are the leading names in this arena.

Recently, China has expressed its aim to go to the moon in the near future. For this purpose, the country is going to incorporate sustainability in its operations. The Chinese space agency will be using already built rockets for the purpose. It will be a planned crewed mission.

According to the Ars Technica reports, China will be reusing the Long March 5 rocket for its crewed mission to the moon. However, there are few upgrades and changes required to make it into a more suitable machine to be sent to the moon. Hence, the Long March 5 will be turned into a “Long March 5-DY.” This news was disclosed by Long Lehao, the chief designer of the Long March rockets.

If China manages to pull this off, it will give the Chinese space agency an edge over the American space agency, NASA. This is because NASA has been working on the moon landing itself as well. However, its space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft are still in progress and are far behind their schedule of performance.

One of the other reasons for using an already built rocket is to save time and beat NASA in its Artemis missions. Although China is working on a Long March 9 rocket which will be an ideal new machine for a lunar landing. However, it is expected to be completed by 2030, and by then, NASA would have sent its rockets for the moon already. The news is unofficial by now but it is expected to be confirmed in the  Zhuhai Airshow.