China Delays Its Most Ambitious Moon Mission Ever

0:00 Anna: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Astronomy Daily. I'm Anna. Avery: And I'm avery. It's Monday, August 24th. Series 5 Episode 175 Back to our Anna: regular weekday format after Saturday's weekend wrap. And it turns out one of the things we flagged as Watch this space over the weekend has already resolved. China's Chang' E7 launch. The one with the window opening today, Avery: the one that could have gone up literally this morning. Anna: Could have, didn't. We'll tell you why, and why the fix isn't as simple as just trying again tomorrow.

0:34 Avery: Then a, uh, follow up on Thursday's big landspace story. Turns out sticking the landing wasn't quite the end of that one either. Anna: Plus, SpaceX quietly ticks over a big round number. And there's a comment worth pointing your binoculars at tonight. If the sky's clear, let's get into it. Avery: And kicking things off. So this is the mission we spent most of Saturday's episode on, the four vehicle hopper and lander expedition to Shackleton Crater. Where does it actually stand as of this morning?

1:03 Anna: Grounded. At least for now. The launch window for Chang' E 7 opened today, August 24, and ran through the 31st. And there was real momentum toward an early attempt. The rocket had already rolled out to the pad at wenchang on the 19th, but over the weekend a, uh, tropical system reported as tropical depression in some accounts. Tropical Storm Nara formed over the Gulf of Tonkin and threatened the launch site on Hainan island with exactly the kind of weather you don't fly a long March 5th through.

1:35 Avery: So it's a straightforward weather scrub. Anna: Weather's the headline reason, but it's not the whole story. Chinese state media via Xinhua also pointed to what's been described as a broader safety and reliability review. As part of the decision, the official line was that the mission does not meet the launch conditions and cannot be carried out within the scheduled window. Full stop. No new date attached. Avery: No new date at all. That seems like a big mission to leave hanging. Anna: It's deliberate vagueness rather than an unknown, though.

2:06 And this is the part that's actually the more interesting story here. You'd think we missed our window because of weather. Means try again in a few days once the storm clears. For most rockets, that's exactly right. Chang' E7 isn't most rockets. Avery: Why not? Anna: Because it's not just going to orbit. It's targeting a, uh, landing on the rim of Shackleton Crater right at the lunar south pole. And that site needs very specific sun angles for the landing to even be possible on top of the orbital geometry needed to get there in the first place.

2:39 Independent trajectory analysis from the outlet China and space, cross referenced with the kind of orbital mechanics reasoning we've seen from other lunar polar missions, puts the next realistic opportunity at about a, uh, month out, sometime in the second half of September. Avery: A month for a few days of bad weather that feels disproportionate until you explain it properly. Anna: It does. And the reason is that polar lunar missions get much narrower, much less frequent windows than the equatorial missions China's flown before.

3:11 You're not just waiting for the moon to be in the right place. You need the specific illumination geometry at Shackleton to line up too. And because the moon's roughly 18.6 year nodal cycle, that combination only recurs for about a week at a time, roughly once a month. And the geometry is gradually shifting as we head deeper into 2026 and 2027. Avery: So miss this week and there genuinely isn't a just wait till Thursday option. Anna: Exactly. It's the trade off you accept for choosing the most scientifically interesting landing site on the moon instead of the easiest one.

3:49 Avery: Any chance the cannot be carried out this year? Phrasing some outlets used actually means what it sounds like a delay into 2027 Anna: worth flagging because a couple of the wire summaries do use language that reads that way in translation. But the more detailed reporting we've seen, including the Thailand based National Astronomical Research Institute's comment that the next viable window is at the earliest about a month away, lines up with a September target, not a multi year slip. We'd read this year there as referring to this specific launch attempt inside 2026's calendar of windows.

4:28 Not a delay out of 2026 entirely. We'll keep tracking it and correct that if firmer reporting says otherwise. Avery: So, grounded by weather, kept grounded by orbital mechanics and probably back on the Anna: pad next month, that's where it stands. The mission itself hasn't changed. Still the hopper, still the ice hunt, still the most ambitious lunar mission ever attempted by any nation, per Brown University's James Head. It's just going to keep us waiting a little longer than we thought. Avery: On Saturday we did say to watch this space.

5:02 Anna: We meant it more literally than expected. Avery: Alright, next one's a genuine. The rest of the story follow up Thursday we told you Landspace had stuck the landing on UK3's first stage. A, uh, big first for Chinese commercial spaceflight. New reporting fills in what happened right after the cameras stopped rolling. Anna: It does. And to be clear up front, the landing itself really did succeed. On August 19, Chu Ke 3's booster came down on all four legs roughly 390km downrange in Gansu Province, close to dead center on its pad about eight minutes after liftoff from the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.

5:42 That part of the story stands exactly as we reported it. Avery: So what's new? Anna: What happened next? According to NASA Spaceflight's reporting, residual liquid methane and oxygen left in the booster ignited near its base shortly after touchdown, and the resulting fire damaged one of the four carbon fiber composite landing legs. That leg failed structurally and the booster toppled over. Avery: So the rocket that uh, just made history didn't survive the moment after making it. Anna: M. Right. And there's actually an added wrinkle on how big a first this was.

6:18 NASA Spaceflight frames this as China's first successful land based recovery of orbital class booster using landing legs full stop across the entire country's launch industry, not just among private companies. That's a slightly bigger claim than the first private Chinese company framing we used Thursday because China's other recent booster recovery success, The Chong Zang 10B in July, used a net catch method at C rather than legs. Both framings are accurate, they're just measuring slightly different firsts.

6:52 Avery: Does the fire undo, um, any of that? Anna: Not really. And this is worth sitting with for a second rather than just calling it bad news. A post landing fire that damages the vehicle is a, uh, genuinely different failure mode than crashing on the way down, which is exactly what happened to Q3's first flight back in December. The hard part, actually sticking a controlled propulsive landing on legs worked. What they lost afterwards is a refueling and inspection problem, not a guidance and control problem.

7:23 Avery: Has, uh, this happened to anyone else? Anna: It has. And recently SpaceX's own Falcon 9 booster B1086 suffered a very similar post landing fire on a drone ship back in March 2025. And it also toppled over. Nobody looks at that and says SpaceX doesn't know how to land rockets. It's part of the unglamorous back half of reusability. Venting, or safely burning off leftover propellant after touchdown is its own engineering problem separate from the landing itself. And it's one every methane fueled reusable booster program is still working through.

7:59 Avery: So Landspace's own line from Thursday moving towards the engineering application phase of reusability still holds up. Anna: If anything, this is what that phase actually looks like. In practice, it's not. We've solved reusability. It's we solved the hardest 90% and now we're finding all the smaller problems that come with trying to make it routine. Expect post landing safing procedures to be exactly what landspace engineers are working on before the next flight. Avery: A real update, not a walk back.

8:33 Anna: Exactly that. Finally, a quick one to round out the news Friday night, SpaceX flew its 100th Falcon rocket mission of the year. Avery: Hundred already with a third of the year stood to go. Anna: The launch itself was routine by SpaceX's standards. 27 Starlink satellites off a Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, deploying on schedule about 62 minutes after liftoff. The booster, flying its ninth mission, landed cleanly on a drone ship in the Pacific, but the number's the story.

9:06 99 of those 100 launches this year have been Falcon 9s, with the other a, uh, Falcon Heavy flight back in April. Avery: And Starlink's obviously doing a lot of the lifting there. Anna: 76 of the year's 99 Falcon 9 flights have been dedicated Starlink missions, and the Constellation itself has now crossed 11,000 operational satellites in orbit. For comparison, SpaceX's full year record is 165 launches set last year. So there's still real ground to cover before this year could challenge that. But triple digits by late August is still a serious cadence.

9:44 Avery: No signs of easing off? Anna: None at all. Avery: Alright, what should people go look at tonight? Anna: Grab binoculars if you've got them, because Comet 220PMcNaught is doing something unusual. It's today's astronomy picture of the day, and for good reason. This periodic comet, which orbits the sun roughly every five years out between Mars and Jupiter, has gone through two separate outbursts this year, brightening by something like 20,000 times its normal level. Avery: 20,000 times? What does that actually mean for someone trying to spot it?

10:20 Anna: Normally you'd need a telescope to see 220p at all. Right now, thanks to the outburst, it's within reach of binoculars and photographs beautifully in long exposure shots. One of today's featured images was taken from South Africa, so it's a solidly southern hemisphere friendly target for anyone listening from down here. Avery: What are we actually looking at visually? Anna: A distinctive bright green head. That color comes from diatomic carmine molecules fluorescing in sunlight with a short dust tail trailing off.

10:53 Nobody's actually certain what's causing the outbursts. The leading guesses are a sudden release of built up subsurface gas or something like a comet quake cracking open fresh icy material to the sunlight. Avery: How long does the window last, not forever. Anna: The comet expected to pass about one Earth sun distance from us in October, and brightness should drop off fairly quickly after that. So if you want to catch it near its best, the next few weeks are the time and, um, the bigger Avery: one on the calendar.

11:25 That partial lunar eclipse we mentioned Friday Anna: still on for this week, the night of the 27th into the 28th, covering a full 96% of the moon's face. About as close to total as a partial eclipse gets without crossing the line. We'll have full local viewing times as it gets closer, but it's worth penciling in now. Avery: A comet tonight, an almost total eclipse by the weekend. Good few days to keep looking up. Anna: That's the job. And that's it for Today's episode, episode 175 of series five in the books.

11:59 Avery: Quick recap. China's Chang' e 7 launch slips by about a month, thanks to weather and the Moon's unforgiving, um, polar landing geometry. Landspace's historic Z3 landing turns out to have ended in a post landing fire and tip over. SpaceX quietly notches its 100th launch of the year, and there's a binocular friendly comet and outburst tonight, plus an almost total lunar eclipse coming this week. Anna: If you enjoyed the show, the best thing you can do is tell a friend. Leave us a rating wherever you listen and follow us.

12:32 Just search AstroDailyPod Daily Pod on your favorite platform. Full show notes and links are always up at astronomydaily IO and while there, take a moment to sign up for our daily Space and Astronomy News newsletter. It's free. Avery: We'll be back tomorrow with more from across the universe. Anna: Until then, keep looking up. Avery: See you next time. Clear skies, everyone.