China's Chang'e-7 Mission Launches This Weekend to Hunt Water Ice at the Moon's South Pole

China's most ambitious lunar mission to date — an orbiter, lander, rover and hopping probe — heads for Shackleton crater this weekend to search for water ice that could sustain a future human presence.

China is sending its most ambitious lunar mission to date toward the moon's south pole this weekend, aiming to answer a question that has lingered for decades: how much water ice is hiding in the permanently shadowed craters that never see sunlight.

The Chang'e-7 stack — an orbiter, a lander, a rover and a small "hopper" robot — will ride a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan island. The rocket was rolled out to the pad on Aug. 19, and airspace closure notices point to a launch window opening around 8:00 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 23 (0000 UTC, Aug. 24), SpaceNews reports. The orbiter will enter lunar orbit roughly five days later and image candidate landing sites before the lander attempts a touchdown with a sub-100-meter accuracy ellipse.

The target is Shackleton crater, a south-pole feature of particular scientific interest. NewsBytes notes the mission carries new hardware, including a hopper with shock absorbers that can jump between sunlit ridges and shadowed craters, plus a deep-space navigation system. Instruments contributed by scientists from Russia, Italy, Egypt, Thailand, Switzerland and elsewhere are aboard, and a wide-field camera could capture the first color photos of the Milky Way ever taken from the lunar surface.

Chang'e-7 is the opening act of China's broader push to build an International Lunar Research Station at the south pole. Together with the Chang'e-8 mission planned for around 2029, it will lay groundwork for extracting water ice — a potential source of drinking water, oxygen and rocket fuel for future crews. If all goes well, the mission would deliver the first in-situ measurements of water ice at the lunar south pole, something remote sensing has so far only hinted at.

Sources: SpaceNews | NewsBytes | TechTimes