Moon Race 2.0: Why so many nations and private companies are aiming for lunar landings

Moon Race 2.0: Why so many nations and private companies are aiming for lunar landings Getty Images Five decades on from the last of the Apollo missions, the Moon is once again a target for space exploration. "China is openly aiming to put a pair of its astronauts on the Moon before 2030," says space journalist Andrew Jones, who focusses on China's space industry. Getty Images After being delayed four times, the first Artemis mission lifted off in November 2022 – but Nasa has many rivals for a return to the Moon Not surprisingly, recently announced delays to US space agency Nasa's own Moon programme Artemis, which has pushed back plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface to September 2026 at the earliest, has produced the phrase "Moon Race" between the US and China. Getty Images India's lander Chandrayaan-3 touched down on the Moon's surface in August 2023, and India has vowed to send astronauts there in future missions Although China launched the first commercial mission to the Moon in 2014, the small privately funded Manfred Memorial Moon Mission was a microsatellite for a lunar flyby built by LuxSpace in Luxembourg.