China plans 2026 debut of new rocket for crewed lunar and LEO missions

HELSINKI — China is building towards a debut Long March 10 rocket launch in what will be a major test for the country’s crewed lunar landing plans.

The Long March 10 series rocket is part of the country’s human spaceflight mission plans for 2026, according to a Dec. 11 statement from the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), the rocket’s developer.

The post states the commanders of the Long March 2F, Long March 7 and Long March 10 series rocket each reported on 2026 human spaceflight engineering tasks during a human spaceflight mobilization meeting, indicating that the rocket has a major milestone scheduled for next year. The statement also explicitly noted an adherence to human-rating standards.

The Long March 10 and Long March 10A are being developed as part of China’s next-generation human spaceflight plans. The former, a three-stage rocket featuring a triple-core first stage with 5.0-meter-diameter cores, is designed to launch a new crew spacecraft (Mengzhou) and a separate lunar lander into translunar orbit as part of plans to land Chinese astronauts on the moon before 2030. 

The latter, the 10A, is a two-stage, single-stick variant for low Earth orbit (LEO) launches, designed to send a LEO variant of Mengzhou to the Tiangong space station. LEO Mengzhou is designed to be partially reusable and can carry more astronauts to Tiangong.

China’s human spaceflight agency, CMSEO, hinted in October at a planned first flight of the Long March 10 and the Mengzhou spacecraft in 2026, with a logo design competition for the Mengzhou-1 crew spacecraft mission. 

CALT’s statement does not make clear if the debut flight will be crewed or uncrewed, nor did it explicitly state the mission will be an integrated launch of the Long March 10A and Mengzhou spacecraft.

CMSEO and CALT have completed a series of tests in recent months, including static fires of a shortened first stage test article of the Long March 10 rocket, a pad abort test for the Mengzhou crew spacecraft, and a takeoff and landing test for the Lanyue crew lander. 

Potential tests in the near future include static fires of a full stage and a low-altitude flight test. There will also be an in-flight escape test at maximum dynamic pressure of the Mengzhou crew spacecraft. A successful test flight of the single-stick Long March 10 in 2026 could lead to a 2027 debut of the tri-core Long March 10. Both will be crucial tests for the country’s lunar plans.

In a related development, CALT unveiled Nov. 30 a recovery ship for the Long March 10 series, outlining a completed rapid development and certification timeline. The vessel is designed to recover Long March rockets for China’s human spaceflight program with a net recovery apparatus, meaning the recovered stages do not require landing legs, used by other systems, such as Falcon 9, New Glenn, Zhuque-3 and the upcoming Long March 12A. The image of the ship, named Linghangzhe, loosely translated to “pathfinder” in English, shows the net apparatus was not yet installed. 

In another step forward for the program, one of a number of Chinese social media posts suggests that work on a pair of vertical assembly buildings for the Long March 10 rocket may have been completed at Wenchang spaceport, with the project earlier slated for completion by the end of the year. The Chinese lunar landing mission plan requires two separate Long March 10 launches—one each for the crew spacecraft and lunar lander stack—requiring two buildings. The pair will then rendezvous and dock in low lunar orbit ahead of a descent to the moon’s surface.

The development of the Long March 10 is a major step for China’s space ambitions, representing the capability to reach the moon and a transition to a post-Shenzhou, partially reusable human spaceflight infrastructure.