For the first time since 1972, humans will travel beyond Earth orbit. Why is the US returning to the moon? And how will China and Russia respond?

April 1, 2026 is expected to go down in astronautics history: for the first time since 1972, a spacecraft with people on board will go to the Moon. The American Artemis II mission does not involve landing on the Earth's satellite: the astronauts - three Americans and one Canadian - will only fly around the Moon. The landing should occur in one launch, as part of the Artemis IV mission. According to current plans, it will take place in 2028, shortly before Donald Trump leaves the presidency of the United States on January 20, 2029. The return of Americans to the Moon will be no less a reward for the Republican than the Nobel Peace Prize. The success of Artemis IV will allow him to loudly declare that America has “regained its former greatness”, ahead of its main competitor - China, which, with the support of Russia and other allied countries, is working on its lunar program. NASA is well aware of this whole rationale: the new head of the space agency, appointed in December 2025, never tires of praising Trump for “shaping the future of American superiority in space for generations to come.” About the Artemis II mission and how the new lunar race will develop - in the material of the Novaya Gazeta Europe.

Long road to the moon

In his inaugural address on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump promised that the United States would “follow our destiny, reaching for the stars” and Mars, where eventually “American astronauts will plant the Stars and Stripes.” Before this goal, however, there is still an important intermediate stage - a return to the Moon. And a significant step in this direction is expected to be taken on April 1 (Thursday night, European time), when the super-heavy Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle with the Orion spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral. On board will be four astronauts, participants in the first human expedition beyond Earth orbit since 1972.

Who will fly to the moon?

• Gregory Reed Wiseman (commander, USA). Engineer, naval aviation test pilot. Participated in US combat operations in the Middle East. In 2009, he was enlisted in the astronaut corps. On May 28, 2014, he launched to the ISS as part of the crew of the Soyuz TMA-13M transport spacecraft. Spent 165 days in space flight. During this time, he went into outer space twice—for a total of 12 hours and 47 minutes. I am sure that Artemis II will be “a small step towards enabling people to live on Mars and maintain a permanent presence on the Moon.”

• Victor Glover (pilot, USA). Since January 1998, he served in the US Navy. By the time he was selected for the astronaut corps, he had flown over 2,000 hours on 40 types of aircraft, and made more than 400 landings on the deck of an aircraft carrier. In 2013, he joined the NASA astronaut corps. In 2020, he was a pilot of the private reusable spacecraft Crew Dragon of SpaceX (this was the first operational manned flight of a ship of this type). Time in space - 167 days, worked in outer space for more than 27 hours. The first African American on a lunar mission. “The desire to explore is part of our essence,” he noted . “We want to know what is beyond the horizon, and the Artemis program gives us that opportunity.”

• Christina Koch (mission specialist, USA). An expert in electrical engineering and physics, she was a research fellow with the US Antarctic Program. In 2013, she joined the cosmonaut corps. In 2019, she went to the ISS on the Soyuz MS-12 spacecraft and spent 328 days in flight (a woman’s record for continuous stay in space). The first woman to fly to the moon. She said that her choice of profession was influenced by the famous photograph of the Earth rising over the lunar surface, taken in 1968 by Apollo 8 crew member Bill Anders.

• Jeremy Hansen (Mission Specialist, Canada). Major in the Canadian Air Force. In 2009, he was enlisted in the astronaut corps. I haven't been in space before. Becomes the first non-American in deep space.

We had to wait a long time for the start of the mission. The first possible date was February 8th. But the dress rehearsal did not go according to plan: unacceptable hydrogen leaks were recorded. Then other problems arose, and the rocket even had to be taken back from the launch pad to the assembly shop.

As a result, the launch of the super-heavy rocket SLS, the height of a 32-story building, is planned for April 1. In about 90 minutes, the ship will make its first orbit around the Earth. At the same time, it will fly in an elliptical orbit, moving as far as possible from the planet by about 2.25 thousand km (for comparison: the ISS flies in an almost circular orbit at an altitude of about 400 km).

Then the engines will lift Orion into a high Earth orbit, with a maximum distance from Earth of 74 thousand km. (total distance from our planet to the Moon is 384.4 thousand km). Orion will spend about 23 hours in this orbit.

The second day will begin with a check of all of Orion's life support systems, and then it will be time for one of the critical stages: translunar injection, a maneuver in which the spacecraft is placed on a flight path to the Moon. A quick return to Earth from now on will become impossible.

Days 3, 4 and 5 will be spent flying to the Moon. Plans include testing navigation, life support and maneuvering systems, as well as training in sheltering in a radiation shelter in case of strong solar flares.

On the sixth day, Orion will pass at its minimum distance from the lunar surface, approximately 6.9 thousand km. As NASA notes , from the ship's windows, the Earth's satellite will look —in terms of size—about the size of a basketball at arm's length. The most difficult test for the crew will be the phase of passage beyond the far side of the Moon: for 45 minutes the ship will completely lose contact with the Earth. At this point, the crew will surpass the record of the Apollo 13 mission (1970) for the maximum distance of a person from Earth. “I would like the whole world to unite and pray that we will get the signal again and get back in touch with everyone,” mission pilot Victor Glover said about this moment.

After flying around the Moon, the return trip will begin, and on these days the engines will have to be turned on only for minimal correction impulses: the gravity of the Moon will naturally turn the ship around and direct it back to Earth.

Finally, on the tenth day, the Orion capsule will enter the atmosphere. To reduce its speed and make its descent safer, Orion will not follow a relatively straight trajectory like orbiters, but will dive into the atmosphere, enter space again, and then begin its descent again. Orion is scheduled to land off the coast of San Diego, California.

Changing priorities

Plans for American manned spaceflight beyond the ISS have been in a state of uncertainty for a long time - in fact, since the cancellation of the ambitious Constellation program approved in the 2000s under George W. Bush. At that time, flights to the Moon, construction of a base, and even a manned expedition to Mars were planned. In 2010, Barack Obama closed this program. At the same time, technical backlogs, including those for the Orion spacecraft, remained.

“The projects continued to develop, although for a long time it was unclear for what specific tasks,” Vitaly Egorov, a popularizer of astronautics and the author of the telegram channel “Zelenyikot and Space,” tells Novaya Evropa. — A big role was played by the socio-economic factor: tens of thousands of jobs, the preservation of production chains from the time of the shuttle program, political lobbying through senators interested in federal contracts for their states...

In the same logic, according to the expert, it was worth considering both the Asteroid Redirect Mission program during the Obama administration (the plan was to capture a small asteroid by unmanned means, deliver it to the Moon, and then send people to it), and the project of a lunar station.

— It was necessary to load the industry for a long time. From a scientific point of view, the station project remained controversial: almost all experiments could be carried out on the ISS. Perhaps the only feature of the lunar station is the opportunity to gain experience in the long-term operation of space technology in interplanetary space, says Vitaly Egorov.

According to him, many experts “perceived the project as a solution that was needed more to support the industry than for a scientific and technological breakthrough”:

— As the founder of the Mars Society (USA) Robert Zubrin said, NASA used to take money from the state because it wanted to do a lunar program, but now it wanted to do it in order to take money from the state.

The Artemis mission is the result of a fundamental overhaul of American space policy launched in 2017, during Donald Trump's first term.

“Although Artemis has been criticized for its high cost, use of old shuttle technology (in fact, they removed the reusable engines from the shuttle and put them on the SLS) and limited technological progress, the logic of this program seems much clearer than the logic of the Obama-era projects: a specific goal, specific missions, measurable results. New scientific tasks have appeared on the Moon: for example, studying the poles, searching for ice and resources, notes Vitaly Egorov.

Besides, there is still progress.

— It is planned to land four people instead of two, as before, a longer stay on the surface, work in the polar regions, which require more fuel to fly than to the equator. That is why it was impossible to simply take old drawings from the time of Apollo and repeat what already worked, the expert explains.

Return of Trump

The first months of Trump's second term became extremely nervous for representatives of the American space industry. Last spring, the republican administration made it clear that the ongoing budget cuts would not bypass the space sector.

The budget draft prepared by the White House included a 24% reduction in NASA funding to $18.8 billion, the lowest level since 1961 (adjusted for inflation). The Trump administration assured that plans to return to the Moon and send the first man to Mars will not be affected:

the cuts will affect only “non-essential” scientific research and a few “financially unaffordable missions.”

“Among other things, Artemis has great propaganda value, much like the Apollo program and manned space exploration in general. It is a tool for global competition. And for Trump, it is an element of a strategy associated with the idea of ​​“returning America to its former greatness,” explains Vitaly Egorov. “Climate and scientific research are less consistent with this logic, which is why Trump tried to significantly reduce their funding.

The professional community began to sound the alarm. For example, the NGO Planetary Society announced the threat of “extinction” of the scientific component in NASA’s activities: 41 unique projects were to be closed, that is, a third of the agency’s entire scientific portfolio. “President Trump has stated that he is “committed to ensuring that America continues to lead in advancing space discovery and exploration.” This budget does exactly the opposite: undermines the nation's ability to lead in scientific discovery, destroys NASA's economic strength, and puts a barrier to cooperation with allies around the world,” the Planetary Society noted.

Additionally, the original “Trump Administration 2.0” plan called for the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft to be phased out after the Artemis III mission in favor of more cost-effective commercial systems. The project to create the Gateway station in lunar orbit was also terminated.

As a result, the most radical scenario was avoided: in July 2025, Congress passed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which was the result of a compromise between the White House and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. He restored funding for key elements of the lunar program. In particular, $4.1 billion was allocated for the purchase of SLS launch vehicles for future Artemis IV and V missions, $2.6 billion for the construction of Gateway, recognized as critical for a permanent presence on the Moon, and $20 million for the construction of the fourth Orion spacecraft. Thus, the Artemis program in its original form then remained a central element of the strategy of “American superiority in space.”

Preparing for landing

As the very name of the current mission suggests, it was a continuation of the Artemis I that took place in 2022 - this was also a flight to the Moon of the Orion spacecraft, but without people on board. The next one, in mid-2027, should be the Artemis III mission, which involves testing the near-Earth docking of the Orion spacecraft with a landing lunar module ( Starship HLS from SpaceX, Blue Moon from Blue Origin, or with each of them in turn).

Recall that during the Apollo program, the Saturn rocket launched both a spacecraft and a landing system at once. The SLS has a smaller carrying capacity: it cannot lift Orion with four astronauts on board (three people participated in the 1968–1972 missions), and it cannot lift the landing module. Therefore, a more complex scheme is proposed: several rocket launches with further docking of vehicles in space.

It was initially assumed that the lander would be the exclusive responsibility of Elon Musk's SpaceX. But in October 2025, the then acting... O. NASA head Sean Duffy announced a review of the contract. The agency encouraged SpaceX's competitors—primarily Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin—to send in their applications. NASA explained this decision by the fact that SpaceX is “behind schedule” with the development of Starship HLS, a special lunar landing version of the Starship spacecraft. In addition, Musk's plan had a weak point from the very beginning: the need to use many tanker ships to refuel the Starship HLS before its flight to the Moon (the technology for refueling directly in space has yet to be tested in practice).

Elon Musk's reaction to the decision to revise the tender results was extremely harsh. In a series of posts on Network X, he called Duffy "Sean Dummy" who was allegedly trying to "kill NASA." Musk stressed that his company is "moving at lightning speed" compared to the rest of the industry, and promised that eventually "Starship will complete the entire lunar mission." Just nine days after Sean Duffy's announcement, SpaceX unveiled an updated version of the lunar Starship. The plan is to simplify the equipment, eliminate the reusability of some components and some thermal protection elements to save weight, and also reduce the number of refuelings.

According to NASA's current plans, the first landing on the Moon in the area of ​​its South Pole is scheduled for early 2028, this will happen as part of Artemis IV. The next mission, Artemis V, is scheduled to take place later that year. After that, NASA intends to conduct regular manned missions, as stated on the space agency's website: "initially at a frequency of once every six months, with a possible increase in the pace as technology develops."

Another ambitious goal is to create a permanent base on the Moon. On March 24, it became known that the Gateway lunar station project was still being suspended (although not formally canceled yet), and the freed up resources would be directed specifically toward the construction of a base on the surface of the Earth’s satellite. The goal, according to Trump's executive order last year, is to "ensure a sustainable American presence in space and prepare next steps related to Mars exploration."

NASA describes the first phase of construction (2026–2028) with the words “build, test, study.” It involves sending rovers, scientific instruments, and power plants to the Moon. The second stage (2029–2033) is a transition to “the creation of partially habitable infrastructure and the organization of regular logistics.” This stage involves regular work by astronauts on the surface. The third phase (2033–2036) is the beginning of “delivery of the heavy infrastructure necessary for a permanent human presence on the Moon.” It was then, according to NASA, that “the transition from individual expeditions to a permanent base” will take place.

China instead of the USSR

Returning to the Moon is not only a daunting technological challenge, but also a thorny political issue. Jared Isaacman, during the Senate hearings on his candidacy for the post of head of NASA, reasoned that “now is not the time for delay, but the time for action”: “If we fall behind, if we make a mistake, we may never catch up, and the consequences could change the balance of power here on Earth.”

It is unlikely that he consciously quoted Lyndon Johnson, who, as Vice President of the United States, reported in 1961 to the then head of the White House, John Kennedy: “If we do not make serious efforts now, the time will very soon come when control of space and, through space achievements, over the minds of people will be so much in the hands of the Russians that we will not be able to even catch up with them, let alone lead.” Either way, the similarities in rhetoric are striking. Only the US opponent has changed.

Now we are, of course, not talking about Russia, the state of whose cosmonautics was openly written last year by Igor Maltsev, director of RSC Energia, the leading Russian enterprise in the field of manned space exploration. “The groundwork created by Korolev and developed by our general designers Mishin, Glushko and Semenov has now been consumed. We need to stop lying to ourselves and others that everything is fine with us,” he wrote in an address to employees on the occasion of the enterprise’s 79th anniversary: ​​“Multi-million debts, interest on loans are eating up the budget, many processes are ineffective, a significant part of the team has lost motivation and a sense of shared responsibility,” he listed some of the problems.

The statistics speak for themselves: in 2025, the United States carried out 194 launches (plus 3 unsuccessful and 1 partially successful), China - 90 (plus 3 unsuccessful), Russia - 17 (the same number was in 2024).

The American company Rocket Labs alone has carried out more launches (18) than the entire Roscosmos. 17 of them are from New Zealand, which is therefore also already a space power.

Russia doesn’t get along with the Moon at all. The first domestic interplanetary automatic station after the collapse of the USSR, Luna-25, went to the Earth’s satellite in April 2023 and crashed during landing. From 2028 to 2036, several launches are planned - from Luna 26 to Luna 30. But it is extremely likely that the deadlines will not be postponed, due to the need to import substitution of Western components, technical problems and underfunding of Roscosmos (after February 2022, the agency lost international clients who provided up to a quarter of the budget).

Four days after the fall of Luna 25, the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan 3 successfully landed in the same area. India became the first power to perform a soft landing in the South Pole region. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has now ordered the landing day of August 23 to be considered National Space Day. In 2024, India became the fourth country in the world to master in-orbit docking technology. The plans include creating a national space station BAS by 2035 and landing Indian astronauts on the lunar surface by 2040.

But still, the main and most obvious contender for the title of lunar power is China. Western experts' technological skepticism about China's capabilities has given way to recognition of Beijing's leadership in a number of areas. For example, in 2025, China successfully tested satellite refueling in geostationary orbit, and in 2024, it was the first in history to return soil samples from the far side of the Moon. In addition, it is the only country that operates relay satellites at the L2 Lagrange point to provide communications with the “invisible” side of the Moon.

Milestones in the development of the program will be the Chang'e-7 (August 2026) and Chang'e-8 (2028) missions. The first is aimed at searching for water ice in the craters of the eternal shadow of the South Pole. The second mission will test 3D printing technology from regolith (lunar soil) to produce building materials directly on the lunar surface.

As for manned flights, a flyby of the Moon on the Mengzhou (Dream Ship) ship with a crew on board is currently planned for 2028. And the landing of taikunauts on the moon ("taikun" in Chinese - great emptiness, space) should happen before 2030. Unlike the US, where a delay in Starship HLS orbital refueling tests could delay the mission for years, China is relying on a simpler design. Two Long March 10 rockets will separately carry the Mengzhou spacecraft with three taikunauts and the Lanyue lander to the Moon. They will dock, after which the two tykunauts will transfer to the lander and go to the Moon. After several hours on the surface, they will return to their counterpart in the Mengzhou in lunar orbit and head back to Earth.

According to Vitaly Egorov, “if the Americans need to do something cooler than Apollo, then China does not have such a limiter: the main thing is to fly and land.” The Chinese landing module, the expert says, will be smaller and lighter than the American one, because it will deliver only two people to the Moon, and there is also no need to stay on the surface for a long time. Due to the less ambitious nature of the program, Egorov notes, China “has a good chance of overtaking America.”

Preparations for the launch of Artemis II have once again shown that unexpected problems are not at all excluded and greatly affect the timing of the implementation of American plans.

And in general, they are constantly being adjusted (back in February, for example, it was assumed that the landing on the Moon would take place within the framework of Artemis III, and not Artemis IV).

The public (rather than US-private) nature of China's lunar program also reduces the threat of delays. Finally, another factor is the absence of sudden changes in political course, typical of Washington after the elections.

They are also planning their own station in China. At the first stages, the International Scientific Lunar Station (ISS) will be unmanned - in the form of a group of automatic landing vehicles with different tasks, which will land in one place and begin to interact with each other. Construction of the “base model” of the station is expected to be completed by 2035.

Moreover, the Chinese may be ahead of the United States in the Mars race. Beijing plans to launch a mission to return samples from Mars as early as the end of 2028. The United States has no chance of organizing anything like this until at least 2031.

Alliance Battle

The United States and China are not fighting this race alone. As in many other areas, two groups of countries have formed in the space industry, led by Washington and Beijing. Vitaly Egorov compares them to NATO and the Warsaw Pact (a military-political bloc led by the USSR), which competed during the Cold War. Only now instead of Moscow there is Beijing.

On the same team with the United States are the signatories of the Artemis Accords . On January 26, Oman became the 61st country to sign the document , which talks about “joint activities in the exploration and use of outer space.” For example, it was expected that the Gateway project would involve, in addition to NASA, the Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies. Now - after the project of a lunar station has been frozen - they will, apparently, be involved in creating a base on the surface of the Moon.

By the way, there were discussions with Moscow about Gateway. Back in 2017, Roscosmos and NASA agreed to cooperate within the framework of the project to create a “circumlunar visited platform.” Until June 2020, Roscosmos was involved in the work of the corresponding expert group.

Meanwhile, as Vitaly Egorov explains, the Russian Federation expected to occupy a position in international lunar projects comparable to its role on the ISS, where there are two segments: Russian and American (and it already includes EU and Japanese modules, as well as a Canadian manipulator).

“But NASA clearly said that this will be an American station, and Russia can participate in its work along with the others. At the same time, Russia had nothing to offer to claim some kind of parity with the United States, says the interlocutor of New Europe.

As a result, it was not possible to reach a consensus, and all attempts to find one stopped in January 2021.

And after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prospects for significant Russian participation in US lunar projects completely disappeared. But Russian-Chinese cooperation has intensified.

There was no place for Russia in the manned program, because it has neither delivery vehicles to the Moon nor super-heavy rockets. But Moscow decided to offer its services within the framework of the MNL project, and Beijing agreed to this.

Moscow's goal is to develop a nuclear power plant that will operate directly on the Moon. As Vasily Marfin, general director of NPO Lavochkin, said , “the energy module is being created in cooperation with Rosatom and under the scientific guidance of the Kurchatov Institute,” and this is “the most difficult work, with the maximum amount of uncertainties and a low level of technological and technical readiness.” One way or another, Roscosmos hopes to place a nuclear power plant on the Moon as early as 2033–2035.

— When Russia signed an agreement with China, Moscow emphasized that the station was a project of China, Russia, and other countries. But this was before the fall of Luna-25. Now we can no longer dream of equality with China,” says Vitaly Egorov, calling the nuclear reactor “Roscosmos’s last hope for being able to show its special significance compared to all other participants in the Chinese project.”

In general, Beijing is actively using the multilateral contract as a tool of soft power. In the spring of 2025, it was reported that “17 countries and international organizations, as well as more than 50 research institutes” had already joined the initiative. Among the states are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Serbia, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Venezuela. Beijing's stated goal is to involve 50 countries and organizations, 500 institutions and 5 thousand scientists in the project. In the union of “friends of the PRC”, each of them would have their own, albeit small, role.

There's enough room for everyone

The rivalry between China and the United States in the exploration of the Moon and cislunar space manifests itself in different ways. For example, China has developed the concept of a lunar communications and navigation constellation of more than 30 satellites and can form this system in the 2030s and 40s. At the same time, NASA is promoting an alternative lunar communications and navigation project, LunaNet. Whichever system is deployed first will probably become the default standard.

Another area of ​​potential rivalry is control over strategic points. For example, over the peaks on the rim of Shackleton Crater, where sunlight is available almost 90% of the time.

Being there gives the technology leader the right to dictate the terms of access to potential ice deposits to all other participants. And ice is not only water itself, but also a potential source of oxygen.

Among other things, there has been debate for several years around the concept of “safety zones.” Such zones, as discussed in the Artemis Accords, would surround future lunar bases and, if necessary, some other areas. Formally, to “ensure the protection of government and private personnel, equipment and operations from harmful interference.” But Beijing and Moscow call this a “de facto seizure of territory” and an attempt to legalize the lunar “fencing” in circumvention of international law. First of all, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which directly prohibits the appropriation of the territories of celestial bodies.

— Attempts to update international space law are facing opposition from the United States, China and Russia. All parties are trying to rewrite the rules for themselves, and as a result there is no progress,” says Vitaly Egorov and adds: “For example, it has long been necessary to regulate the issues of space debris, the activities of private companies and the use of resources.

The expert explains that, “according to current rules, everything mined in space belongs to all of humanity: for example, the United States de jure does not own the 380 kg of lunar soil brought by the Apollo crews, but simply stores them at home.” Now the United States is interested in legalizing the extraction of space resources, as this opens the way for private investment and potential commercial projects. China and Russia, Egorov continues, “oppose US proposals, fearing technological backwardness and strengthening American advantage”:

— Formally, they appeal to the idea of ​​​​the inadmissibility of appropriating space, but de facto we are talking about the issue of maintaining geopolitical balance.

Thus, the Moon is gradually becoming a mirror of earthly conflicts and, in the absence of a global regulator, may well turn into the “Wild West” of the 21st century. The “Artemis Accords” more than once speaks of the role of the UN and personally of the secretary general of the world organization, but given its powerlessness in resolving earthly conflicts, there is no hope for an effective role of the UN on the Moon.

However, Vitaly Egorov is confident that real conflicts “on the Moon or because of the Moon” should not be expected: there is a lot of space on the surface (even in the area of ​​interest to everyone - at the South Pole), and you can “calmly go about your business without particularly interfering with each other.” According to the expert, in the event of active exploration of the Moon, at least joint consultations will most likely begin, implying coordination of security issues:

— Space remains a hostile environment where mutual assistance is more important than political differences. You can butt heads on Earth as much as you want, impose sanctions, hold demonstrations off the coast of Taiwan, and so on, but in space it’s good when there is another team nearby that can come to the rescue if something happens,” says Vitaly Egorov and recalls a scene from the film “Gravity”, where an American astronaut was saved only by reaching a Chinese station.