China postpones launch of unprecedented water-hunting moon mission amid space race

By Jackie Wattles, Simone McCarthy, CNN

(CNN) — The anticipated launch of China’s robotic Chang’e-7 mission, designed to scour the moon’s south pole for water ice — a highly valuable resource that the US also hopes to use — “cannot take place during the planned window this year,” according to a statement from the China Manned Space Engineering Office shared by Chinese state media.

The mission had been expected to lift off as soon as Sunday evening, or Monday morning Beijing time. It’s not clear how soon China may be able to attempt to get the mission off the ground.

The precise reason for the delay was not immediately clear. State media shared only that the “lunar probe does not meet launch conditions,” and the “assessment was conducted following the principle of prudence, reliability and absolute mission success.”

The United States and China are racing to build settlements on the moon’s south pole, where water is believed to exist in frozen abundance inside shadowy craters.

No mission has yet directly analyzed water on the moon, as Chang’e-7 will attempt to do.

Though the US has detected and begun estimating the size of water ice stores using remote sensors on orbiting satellites, it has never successfully sent a probe to drill for the resource.

One Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, sent a water-hunting drill to the moon in 2025, but the spacecraft tripped while attempting to land on the south pole’s notorious treacherous terrain and could not complete its mission objectives.

But Chang’e-7’s launch delay could put this chapter of the space race — as US officials have referred to the standoff with China — back on competitive footing.

Race to the south pole

The US has several spacecraft heading for the same lunar region as Chang’e-7 is targeting within the next year. Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic Technologies could launch its Griffin lander to the moon’s south pole as soon as late 2026. And Jeff Bezos’ space venture, Blue Origin, has plans to send up to two robotic landers to the moon next year, one of which may include the VIPER rover, a prospecting robot specifically designed by NASA to hunt for water ice and other lunar resources.

The belief that the lunar south pole contains vast stores of frozen water is a key reason this region has become the main stage for this international competition. The resource holds enormous value for deep-space exploration and a potential lunar base because it can be converted to breathable air, drinking water or even rocket fuel.

Whether water ice is present in sufficient amounts to be useful for these purposes is not currently known, and Chang’e-7 could help make “important progress on this question, sharpening and focusing experiments for further exploration and testing,” Yuqi Qian, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong, told CNN.

Qian said that with Chang’e-7, China’s lunar program is “shifting from an exploration program to a resource utilization program.”

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