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Poor weather has delayed the launch of China's latest moon mission.
According to reports, the growth of Tropical Depression Narra in the Gulf of Tonkin has prompted China's space agency to delay the liftoff of Chang'e 7 significantly — possibly until 2027.
"China's Chang'e 7 lunar probe does not meet launch conditions, and its launch therefore cannot take place during the planned window this year," the state-run Xinhua news agency reported today (Aug. 23), citing the China Manned Space Agency.
Chang'e 7 had originally been scheduled to launch today from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan. But then Narra started brewing in the Gulf of Tonkin, just to the island's west.
Launching a rocket into a howling gale is less than ideal. Chinese space officials initially pushed the launch back a day, to Monday (Aug. 24), before concluding that the new target was unattainable as well.
It's now unclear when Chang'e 7 might lift off; messaging on the topic has been characteristically murky. (China is fairly tight-lipped about its space activities, revealing far less publicly than, say, NASA or the European Space Agency does. For example, China announces who's flying on its crewed missions just one day before liftoff.)
The Chang'e 7 launch requires a certain lineup of Earth and the moon, so it cannot simply occur as soon as the skies around Wenchang clear. Some online reports suggest that Chang'e 7 could lift off as soon as September, while others — including today's Xinua story — have it launching sometime in 2027.
Whenever it occurs, the liftoff will draw a lot of attention. Chang'e 7 is an ambitious and exciting mission, and it could have serious implications for lunar exploration down the road.
Chang'e 7 consists of an orbiter and a lander, which will likely touch down on the rim of Shackleton Crater, near the moon's south pole (though China has not announced an official landing site).
This region is thought to harbor lots of water ice, most of it on crater floors that have not seen the sun for billions of years. Chang'e 7's lander will deploy a rover and a hopping robot to hunt for this precious resource, which could help support human settlements in the area.
China aims to build such an outpost in the coming years, as does the United States, via NASA's Artemis program. U.S. officials have stressed the need for the nation to win this new space race so that it can establish the norms for living and working on Earth's nearest neighbor.