Main Engine Cut Off - T+338: Zhuque-3, Long March 10B, Chang’e-7 (with Andrew Jones)

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Andrew Jones returns to the show to catch up on the Chinese space industry—the landings of Zhuque-3 and Long March 10B first stages, Chang’e-7 and its delay, and more. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Steve, Joakim, Ryan, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Joonas, Josh from Impulse, Fred, Will and Lars from Agile, Miles O’Brien, Natasha Tsakos, Lee, Warren, Russell, Stealth Julian, Kris, The Astrogators at SEE, Frank, Matt from Built, Theo and Violet, Joel, Donald, Pat, David, Jan, Matt, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics China’s Landspace recovers booster with second orbital launch of Zhuque-3 rocket - SpaceNews Landspace aims to refly recovered Zhuque-3 booster within six months - SpaceNews LandSpace’s Zhuque-3 topples following milestone landing - NASASpaceFlight.com China becomes second country to recover orbital booster with Long March 10B - SpaceNews China lines up methalox Long March 10C as commercial workhorse after first booster recovery - SpaceNews Chinese Long March 7A rocket explodes shortly after liftoff - SpaceNews Long March 12 launches despite recent 7A failure, Long March 2C launches satellite for UAE - SpaceNews China delays Chang’e-7 lunar south pole landing mission launch - SpaceNews Long March 6C launches 7 satellites, Chang’e-7 rocket rolled back to assembly building - SpaceNews The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @[e-mail] on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by Zhou Quan Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Welcome to Managing Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. Today we've got an old friend with us. We've got Andrew Jones, a correspondent at Space News, writer at space.com, elsewhere on the internet covering all things spaceflight in China. That's a pretty expansive category because it's everything from national policy to the new private or commercial companies that are starting up in China, the state organizations that are operating, the Long March vehicles, the Changa missions, so much going on lately to talk about. Most importantly, a couple of newly recovered.

first stage boosters. Zhu Q3, Long March 10B, have landed and been captured successfully in the last couple of months. We've got a Changa 7 mission coming up to the South Pole, the moon. That's been a little bit mysterious in the last week or so to talk about.

So I thought it was a good time to have him on and talk about all things going on in China. So without further ado, let's give Andrew a call. Andrew Jones, welcome back two years, over two years, two and a half years since you've been on. So we're going to play a game of what happened last time. Are you ready for that?

Sure. All right. Have we started? This is it. This is the show. All right, we're on. We're running. Orion Space breaks Chinese commercial launch record with Gravity One solid rocket.

Gravity one. Yeah. That beastly looking thing. So that's flown, I think, two more times since. Not a great flight rate. It's not. But it's always spectacular to see that thing take off. Absolute chaos.

And then... It looks fake. too far away. So. Yeah. What else we're talking about? I guess that was when G60 mega constellation raised a billion dollars. So that was good.

And then Chi Chiao 2 was launching. Look at that. Wow. Okay. While that's still up there, that is going to be supporting Changa 7 when it gets to launch eventually. Oh, nice. Do you want to start with Changa or should we save that, save the moon stuff? You've got the plan, so let's just...

All right, let's talk about, well, we shouldn't bury the lead that there's been a couple of boosters landed or caught in China in the last couple of months, or overdue talking about some of them. We had the Long March 10b caught on... How would you describe the system that caught the 10B first stage? Good question. Well, what have I described it as a net capture system on a drone ship, I guess? Was it a net, though? Isn't it more like cabling? Wires, yeah.

Myers, it feels more like the cameras that are suspended over stadiums that shoot on-field footage of football, of whatever variety. It feels like those kind of systems. So we had that caught at sea, and then the most superlative heavy statement last week when the Zhu Q3 booster landed, which was the first Chinese orbital, there was a glorious sentence in one of your articles. It was the first Chinese orbital class booster to land on land with legs. There you go. They have to be very specific with these things, right? So, yeah, yeah.

So that was downrange landing. Only the second flight. I thought it was very impressive that they turned around from the first flight to second flight and stuck the landing. It's fallen over since, so that has compromised some reuse plans. but maybe you can give us a little previously on Zhu Q3. First launch, what went wrong there, and then what did they change to actually pull off this second launch landing?

Yeah, so last December, I think, was the first launch. So this was launching from the kind of commercial innovation zone at Jochuan Spaceport, North, northwest China, and, yeah, reached orbit. and the recovery attempt was quite spectacular, came flaming in, landed in flaming pieces all over the place, downrange in, what was it, Ming Chin County, you know, in another province. And, yeah, I mean, it got quite far down into, you know, pulled off reentry burn, descent burn. And, yeah, so they kind of picked up the pieces, as it were, literally and metaphorically, came back. And I think they reinforced the skirting and they changed the landing burn from five engines to three engines.

So they made some changes, learned from the first one. And then, yeah, quick, kind of rapid turnaround. So then was it August 19, second attempt? And, yeah, they managed to land this thing right on target, downrange, I think, 390 kilometers. And then there you go. So China has suddenly in a space of, you know, underage. the two months. They've got two different orbital boosters which they can land. And now they're at the stage where they're going to be picking these apart and trying to get them refurbished and see if

they can refly them again. And the Juku 3 itself is Falcon 9-like in payload looks very similar. The landing legs look very similar. He uses methane as a fuel instead of kerosene, so a little bit different in that way. Almost kind of like a weird Falcon 9 starship halfway between vehicle. Right? We've switched over to methane. It looks like, is it aluminum or stainless steel tanks?

I don't know which. It's like, I should have not. Stained steel, yeah. It is. Okay, so yeah, that's why I'm thinking. It's like they pulled a little of the starship decisions into the Falcon 9 stack. But land space generally, right, they've, this is UQ3.

So they've been through a couple of numbers already. But does this kind of change the game for them? and this is the workhorse moving forward for them and this is what they're going to be focused on. Yeah, the payload capacity for this, this is something which is going to be a lot more capable, a lot more useful in many terms. So the Jutuary 2E, right,

so they've already launched some satellites for the Gen Fan constellation, which you mentioned before, is previously known as, what was it, G60. G60. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, that's progress. I mean, they're already earning launch contracts.

So that's good. But the payload capacity is a lot greater. So around, was it 18 tons when we used? So, you know, a serious batch of Leo constellation satellites that they can put into orbit with this. So this is kind of what they're focusing on. So looking to reach, you know, 10 flights a year as soon as they can and then build up to 30 to 50. 50 flights from there. So at the moment, they're using Tienture 12A engines, I think,

and they're going to upgrade these to the 12B in the next year. So this version isn't up to the full payload capacity that they've been stating, but once they get the new engine in, then they'll be able to ramp that up yet. I'm choking right now, but I'm very thankful for these shows when you can come on and I can rework all of my pronunciations for all of these different things that I've gotten horribly wrong now

that I know that you're saying all these out loud. This is great. You've probably listened and been like, what is this guy even saying at these points? No, that's all good. I mean, it's just, yeah. All right, so they were, prior to this toppling over,

which I'm also curious to dig into a little. It looked like there was a fire that broke out, near or around one of the legs, one of the legs collapsed, booster toppled over. they haven't officially said that, right? This is more just like photos from people in and around the area that have been posting this kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, the aftermath was a bit of a fiasco, social media-wise. So, yeah, first thing, they landed at great, great footage and everything like this and, you know, looking into the repercussions and lots of people, you know, kind of cheerleading or just getting excited and, you know, all kinds of stuff like this. But then there was like this,

apparent footage of a fire breaking out and then, you know, pictures later of this thing clearly on its side. I mean, there was lots of discussion, is this AI or not? It was, it was a mess, right? So, and before, before that even, you had land space officials in official interviews saying that, yeah, okay, Raymond for six months, but kind of refurbishing this and getting it flying again. and that's kind of about acknowledging the fact that this thing kind of, you know, caught fire, burned down, sank into the swamp, whatever it did. And yeah, so that's been, that was a bit weird to kind of disentangle, right? And then there was a post on Weibo and I think on Twitter, the same thing, where they've just basically said, yeah, we're going to, you know, this is great, we're going to take it away, disassemble, look at it, you know, and then, you know, work towards reflight. and then was like, well, hey, what about the whole falling over thing, right?

You're not just going to, you know, ignore that. So, yeah, it's, I don't know what's going on. So they're clearly, you know, they maybe need to see the video of the, there was like great Falcon 9 video where it had all the different ways, that orbital boost and fail and fall over. Just like, yeah, it just happens. I mean, this is part of the learning curve, right? It's, yeah, the photo of it being toppled over didn't look like it was in great shape.

It looked a little squashed in areas. So, uh, but I'd be fine. I feel like there was a moment. I had a horrible internet brain moment where I was like, I feel like we missed into a phase where people went through conspiracy theories of they didn't actually land the same rocket that took off from the launch pad. They just merely dropped another stage and landed it. There was a second where I was like,

I feel like that part of the internet should have risen up. But I'm glad we avoided that. Yeah, I must have missed that. Yeah, wow. No, it didn't happen. I know, I know. I know, I know. But like, no, I kind of like, I kind of switched off from that for a while because it's just like, okay, this is just, you know, there's just a load of opinions and load of different photos and this is AI.

It's just like, okay, it's always going to be like this, right? So I'm surprised. Yeah, now you mention it. It's. I wouldn't be shocked to actually have that be somewhere out. If it exists out there and you were writing on the internet, please don't want it to me and Andrew. you're giving people ideas here so yeah i know it's problematic all right so either way i feel like excellent progress uh to go from first flight you know they they got close but didn't quite pull it off

second flight nailed it that is better than i think many people would have guessed uh and i think generally like new glen i felt the same about that this second wave of we're landing rocket boosters is going a lot better than people would have expected considering how hard it was for falcon to get to this point. I find that aspect quite interesting in that, you know, and I should say architecturally, you're going to have to remind me the specific pronunciation of Zhu Q3. It's not JuQ3.

It's like, say it again. Just say ZQ3, whatever you want. I'm definitely not saying Z. The downrange landing aspect is really interesting because they can do these downrange land landings. Now, does that, does the, what, What does it look like for them flying to different inclinations, different orbital planes? Like, do they just have this one downrange pad right now?

And that is the, that they need to fly that direction. They can't do another direction. They need to set up another pad if they're going to a different inclination. Do we have any insight to what that overall architecture would be? No. So I think that that pad is kind of set up for the inclination, which is most useful for these mega constellations, right? So that's what they're done.

I mean, I'm not even sure about the logistics they have in place for actually, once they've recovered this thing and then getting it back to where they need to go, if it goes back to Hujo or wherever. Yeah, so I don't know how far down the road they are on that. So I think they might be working on drone ships as well. I mean, at Wan Chang in southern China, so that place is expanding quite rapidly. So they've got two pads, it's expanding to four pads. I mean, multi-user kind of facilities.

So there's drone ships being constructed, which will be multi-user as well. So, yeah, you've kind of caught me out because I haven't kind of looked into. you know, how are they going to... I mean, I don't know. We barely get information about the launches. I don't know how we're supposed to get information about these future architectures, but... Yeah, I mean, there's just so much going on at the moment. It's just like, you cover one thing and then it's something else

is happening, and, you know, I mean, I was talking to someone recently about China 7, right? And I was saying that I used to have time to go and look at, like, lunar reconnaissance orbiter images and try and find the latest kind of like where U2 Rover was and stuff like this. It's just like just no chance. I've got time to go and do some kind of whimsical kind of like complete waste of time

looking for something. It's just like it's just a barrage of nonstop news. So yeah. It's just an interesting thing to consider because we don't have any other I mean there's very few other inland launch sites that have that are salt to taste okay with flying downrange overpopulated areas that then result in a land landing, you know, that we don't have that. We don't have a desert launch site in the U.S. where they can launch out of Mojave and land somewhere in the, you know, southwest U.S. Maybe at some point we get more comfortable with operations and there is an inland launch site like that.

Or, you know, there's this thing right now that's in a national space policy to go find a new federal site for reentry site. Is that only for orbital re-entries or is that something that, you know, people always talk about, can SpaceX launch a starship from Starbase and land it in Florida? We don't see that anywhere but this kind of, this kind of behavior. And that changes a lot of the aspects because here in the U.S. we've got, all right, you've got two options. You got return to launch site or you got land on a boat. That's it.

You got those two options. Pick one, pick both. So it is interesting to consider what would an infrastructure look like that includes downrange, landing on land, but I don't know, in a lot of ways it feels easier. A lot of ways it feels more complex because of the limitations you might get to on these inclination decisions. Yeah. So, I mean, just thinking about it, I mean, I think they first announced Jutraer 3, was it,

20, 23. So, I mean, to go from from that and putting a hopper together and then making an orbital launch in, you know, in two years or something. I mean, the whole thing was crazy. So I think that to actually get this thing flying, they would, would have needed to build their own launch facilities, which they did anyway, and the only place that they would be able to do that where, you know, this kind of thing is actually allowed was Joe Chuan. So I guess they were. Yeah, that was the only So the constraints, right? So, One Chang is coming, you know, the Hainan commercial launch site is coming online and becoming, you know, more flexible, more capable and can host more things.

So I think that's now, you know, now I think. So as I say, I'm not 100% sure on what their plan is for this, but there's lots of launch companies there setting up facilities and so on. So, yeah, that's probably going to be part of the plan, I guess. So over in the Long March world, we had the Long March 10b, which we probably have to take a quick side tangent on the Long March 10 family. The namings are a little crazy. We've got a Long March 10A, a 10B, and a 10C. I understand the 10, of course. And just 10, obviously, yeah.

All right, so 10B is the one that got caught on net slash cable system out at C. can you help us figure out, you know, this progression from 10 all the way to 10C and untangle the way we should think about those different variants? Right. So the 10A is a single stick rocket, which is kind of based on the long match five in terms of similar engines, but, you know, more powerful engines. this YF10, sorry, YF100 family and these are the YF 100K, which are more powerful than the standard ones, 5 meter diameter. And this single-stick rocket is designed for human space flight, which will be taking the new Mungjo spacecraft to low Earth orbit, so sending astronauts to the Tiengong space station.

So the Longmatch 10 standard would be three of those core stages put together with a second and third stage on top. And that will be used to launch astronauts and separately a landing stack into trans lunar injection. So two launches of the Longmatch 10 will be used to enable a crude landing on the moon. right so if that makes it so kind of you know single stick version of 10a for leo and then the full version for going to the moon so that the 10b is what they call a commercial kind of variant for cargo so this will be used for constellation launches just like you know everything else that they're planning and then that's that's the one as you say was caught by the net wire thing and then then you have the 10c, which is a new, a new variant, which is going to be coming out next year.

And that is, instead of being Carolox, this is going to be using methane. I think was it going to have a larger second stage and basically be more capable. And again, I think that's going to be one they're going to be using most for, again, getting this constellation plans off the ground. So 10B is kind of the, the, tech from the 10 and the 10a in the shape of whether it's going to be the 10C so it's transitory

like one day we'll probably lose the 10B and have just the 10C or do you think all are staying around? Hard to say but yeah I think that they said after they caught the 10B they said oh yeah we're working on the 10C and this is going to be the main one for commercial launches

from that family I guess so yeah it's kind of a path finder so I mean 10B was very useful in terms of like, hey, we can catch a booster. And also this kind of works for the human space light kind of program. And also, yeah, we can build on this for a more capable and capable Mephylox variant. So, yeah. Okay.

So knowing that there's all these different, you know, things out there, I'm curious where we sit in 2026, how we should think about the new companies that have been, sprung up in China and how they have kind of graduated to where they are now versus the Long March family. Because early days when you, the first couple of times you're on the show, we were talking about this. Most of the commercial or private companies were launching, you know, solid boosters that were pretty much formerly government run or government launched. And they were doing their first initial orbital launches with solid boosters, which was like, all right, you're operating them, but it's really not that different yet. Now with this new

version of the GQ 3 rocket, right? That is like wholly different from what we're seeing elsewhere. So are we more independent between these two things than there was before or is it still a little bit of hiding the ball on like, well, this is a commercial

company, but they're using a lot of tech from these other lines or it's state owned so it's not really that different anyway. I just, what is the, how do you think about it these days? Yeah, I mean, I think we're just going to have to look to see who's winning contracts to launch for Guo Wang and Chenfan, right? And see which ones are reliable and which ones actually establish themselves and then which companies kind of disappear. So, yeah, I mean, the thing is at the beginning, so when was it 2014, where they decided, oh, okay, here in China, we need to do.

something similar to SpaceX and, you know, Planet Labs. You know, we need to kind of unleash private capital and let these companies do something. But they were limited to solid rockets because they weren't allowed to step on the toes of, you know, the state sector. And back then it was kind of like they were thinking, okay, well, we can launch for universities, Coupsats, things like this and scrounge around for some international contracts, right? And it wasn't until after Starlink and then when China says, okay, we're going to we need aversion or maybe two of Starlink, that it became apparent to China, okay, we're going

to, we need to vastly improve our launch rate and our kind of pay our mass to orbit, right? So then that kind of allowed these companies to start thinking of much bigger launches. So, I mean, you even seeing companies emerging now, which are kind of just leapfrogging. They're not bothering, never mind solid rockets. They're not even thinking about medium lift rockets. They're going straight for some kind of some version of whatever they think Starship is, right? So, yeah, I mean, it's all happening. It's all kinds of companies.

And they still emerge like once a month. There's like some kind of press release about some team somewhere which has done something or, you know, they've got expertise from here and there and they want to do this, right? And it's slightly different flavor of something which is. is already out there. So yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how this is actually, yeah, I mean, how this is actually going to play out, how this is going to look down the line. I don't have much from my idea and I don't spend much time thinking about it because it's just so much time in energy actually just following what's going on. And, you know, you know, I haven't really, I don't really have a vision for

how this will will play out at the moment. So that's something I should, uh, should probably, um, think about when I'm out on a run or something. I don't know, because in a lot of ways, it feels like the way we read about, you know, the Soviet design bureaus on the competing rocket designs and spacecraft designs. It feels more like that than the private commercial industry in the U.S., which are, you know, a different competition around, like, how is your business set up and what is the split between launch services and satellite services?

and there's a different mechanism behind it. And there's also not, I think it's easy if you're not in the space industry to write, Chinese commercial companies starts up like, is this the SpaceX killer? Like is a headline, you'll write, right? And whereas in the industry, you know that like these things don't really interact that much because they can't. There's companies that cannot fly on one of the other. We're not going to get G-Lyn satellites flying on a SpaceX ride share. You're not going to get, you know, payloads from the U.S. going over and flying on a long March family.

I think that that storyline you should write about is the Indian launch vehicles that are coming online, where U.S. companies have flown payloads on Indian rockets. That new space industry that's happening there interacts more with the U.S. market here. So for, you know, the vast majority of the audience that's listening in the U.S. on this show, it's not really worth digging into that side of the Chinese industry because we're not going to get affected by that market in the same way directly for, like payloads. Where it does come up is the capabilities that are being developed in and around, whether it's Chinese state organizations or companies, the capabilities that they have there

do influence things here on like a policy basis. So it used to be very restrictive to get imagery licenses here in the U.S. And one of the responses as imagery constellations have grown elsewhere is we probably should make it easier to just get like, hey, if this capability exists in another country, you can go fly it much easier now than it was 10 years ago when it was really hard to get licenses to take 10 centimeter imagery or something like that. So the capability growth is the important thing to keep track of in my view, because that's what is felt across the globe, whether you can or cannot interact with the Chinese market. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, good analogy with the Soviet bureaus. So yeah, I mean, I, I, I,

I hear some people kind of complain, well, these aren't really commercial. Well, it doesn't really matter. I mean, this is about China developing capabilities to the things it wants to do. So whether it qualifies as commercial under some kind of, you know, very narrow arcane kind of interpretation of the word commercial, who cares, right? Yeah, it kind of doesn't matter when you're, that stuff matters when it's your own country that you're concerned about because that's how your money is being spent

as a taxpayer, right? So like, that doesn't necessarily matter as much in other countries in a way that I really have an opinion about. What I look at, like even when I look over at Europe, right? And you see how are the competing forces there

between some of the new small launchers coming online, what Arian space is doing? You're looking at the strategy that they're putting in place and the way that they're putting that into a roadmap. It's not necessarily... I think what I'm saying,

is that oftentimes I feel bad about not having the same level of opinions in other countries, but I'm realizing as I get older, that's not my job. That isn't the thing that I really have a vested interest in. I don't have a lot of opinions about it because that isn't the level I interact at it with it at. But when I follow those other countries or organizations, what I care about is what they intend to care about and what they're building towards. Because where we'll interact, what it seems most likely, is where we'll interact with the Chinese commercial market or the government decisions is on the lunar surface.

And how are they making their way there? That's the, like, we're not allowed to work with China over here. NASA and China cannot work together right now. It's written into our laws. But like, seems likely we're going to meet each other on the moon somewhere. And is that going to look like an episode of For All Mankind, or is it going to be different? So, I don't know.

Prove to me that I shouldn't feel bad about myself, Andrew. That's why I have you here in the show. Yeah, I mean, look, it's, yeah, in that kind of vein, I mean, it's kind of good to, rather it's kind of useful to kind of just try to observe what's going on and make sense of it and put in context rather than necessarily need to have an opinion on it. So, I mean, there are people who want to read that. I don't have an opinion about everything on the internet. Come on. It's not on the internet, I thought. Yeah, well, there you go.

All right, let's talk about the moon a little bit before I get you out of here. Changa 7 is a very mysterious launch campaign in which it was rolled out to the launch pad. This is a lunar South Pole landing with kind of a long, lengthy way to the moon. They're going to launch, they're going to go to a 90-day reconnaissance orbit and then go down to the surface. So that makes the launch window is kind of funny. A tropical depression or typhoon made its way in and around the launch site. So that delayed a day or two, and now it's been rolled back. and is not going to launch in 2026 at all.

So if you're a betting man, if you're taking Kalshi odds, like you were giving me shit before the show off, my past Kalshi betting habits, give me your Kalshi bet for, we're not sponsored, but give me your bet for, it got delayed because of the weather

and that pushed it out of its launch window. Give me, there's probably a technical problem they found when it was on the launch pad or something else entirely. Well, that is a very interesting question, but I mean, I can't really just, you know, speculate on, you know, I mean, look, I don't have any evidence that there's a technical problem, right? So I can't come out and say that. So, I mean, yeah, I just, yeah, the whole thing was kind of chaos in the sense of trying to make sense of why this thing wasn't flying. Right? So, yeah, typhoon in the area, which, yeah, so that delayed it for a while. and then and then suddenly like yeah we're not launching at all and we're not launching this year so my understanding just from kind of looking at journal papers trying to work out what the

mission objectives are and what they mean by we want to guarantee you know complete mission success or whatever phrase that they used in the end is that okay I mean if they go into the moon, right, there's a launch window every month, right? So that's fine. So I don't think particularly the fact that they're going to the lunar south pole, I don't think that's particularly special because they're going to enter a kind of polar orbit anyway, right? But lighting is a weird thing down there.

Yeah, I'm coming, coming on to that, right? So it's just like you have a launch window to get to the moon, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, there you go. But beyond that, so. What my understanding is that, yes, so this channel 7 kind of spacecraft stack includes an orbiter, lander, a rover, and this kind of cool mini flying probe. Right.

So the orbiter would spend around three months in orbit with a camera probably a bit better than LRO, the narrow angle camera on that. and maybe going as close as 15 kilometers from the surface when it's passing the lunar South Pole. And they want to get as much imagery as they can. As good as LRO imagery is, I mean, if you're using a better camera and going much closer, I mean, I'm having their own data, right?

That's what they want. So, I mean, LRO is probably, what, 50 meters per pixel, something like this. They're probably looking at, you know, below 10 meters per pixel. So, yeah, I mean, they want to, that data and then that data collected by the orbiter will be used by the lander for the descent phase. So it knows exactly where it is because there's only a few places at the Lunar South Pole where the lighting conditions where you can get lighting for maybe 100 days continuously, right?

There's only a few places like this. And to make a safe landing, it's a very small zone. So that's why they have to take this kind of very careful approach and get all this image. under different lighting conditions as well. So that's what they need, you know, why we understand they need three months of remote sensing data. So the thing is, if they missed this launch window, what it could be, if it's not a technical thing, if they missed this launch window because of a typhoon, say, they either then they would need to compress their remote sensing campaign, or then they would have to do a landing later into this kind of period.

of peak illumination at the Lunar Sapol. So this happens, you know, starts in sometime in November and lasts two, three months, something like this. So I think this is part of what they're actually trying to prove with Chang'O7 is that they can land somewhere and they can take advantage of this extended solar illumination, right? And the other thing is that they have to land somewhere where they can get this extended period of illumination and also have access to shadowed areas where they think

there might be volatiles. so they can go and assess this with the mini-flying probe, which they have, which will look for evidence of water ice. So I think the constraints for a successful mission, I mean, there's a lot going on there, right? So I think the fact that a typhoon kind of messed with the launch window, I mean, it's plausible that that's what's going on here. The problem is that then, okay, if you're really fixated on this kind of extended period of sunlight, well, I mean, you're going to have to wait until the same kind of time next year.

And then that's also during kind of typhoon season. So, you know, good luck. It really is crazy. I mean, these lunar missions, the more advanced lunar missions end up with this many constraints. which is why, you know, what we often talk about is SLS-O-Rion in regards to the moon. And it's like, all right, now imagine how many constraints those have had just to launch to Earth orbit alone and now map that up to something like this is unbelievable. I mean, the other Chongom missions, right, there were complexities to many of them that were new and unique.

So the far side landings, they obviously had the relay satellites that we were talking about earlier, which is something that to get real-time communications back, you need that relay satellite, real-time-ish. So that had a, that coordination was a substantial complexity above the very early Chongom missions. This has to be, I think this is the most exciting version. Because like lunar sample return, come on, we've picked them up with our hands. It's all right.

The South Pole landing near Shackleton, that far south. A lot of times people say lunar South Pole and they're like, it's 60 degrees south. I'm like, that's not the South Pole. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get on up into the 80s, you know. And I think this is looking at something near 88 degrees or something like that. I saw some figure of like how south might they be. And it was something around 88 degrees south.

Yeah, yeah, it's very fast. It's like on the bottom. A couple of tens of kilometers away from, you know, the South Pole. So, yeah, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, it's all about lighting constraints and, you know, the vibration of the moon and everything like this. So it's just like there are kind of like, it's weird to think about it.

But there's kind of, you know, you could term it like a summer solstice on the South Pole. So, so, yeah. And as I say, they're going to have to land, you know, landing ellipse of below 100 meters. So, you know, kind of a slim style kind of thing, but, you know, landing upright. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, I mean, this is very challenging. So, I mean, I think, yeah, we've probably got a bit comfortable with just like all these lunatic. the landing attempts and the successful ones, especially in, you know, in recent years. So, so, yeah, when you actually dig down into what they actually need to do to hit all their

objectives, it's a lot. So, but yeah, I mean, to think that that's it, if it is the case, you know, just maybe the kind of high altitude winds can just knock you off for a whole year, right? If that's the case. It's- Right, push you out of your launch window. Landing window is more appropriate, probably. Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, the kind of we were talking before the show and kind of this is one of the things where you do have a few people who are, you know, maybe with an agenda saying, look, China sets targets and it hits them, right? And it's just like, well, it's not the case, right? It suffers failures. It's, you know, has to obey the laws of physics and economics like everyone else. So it's just like things will go wrong or just you'll have bad luck, right? Yeah. And just things won't go your way and then you're looking at a year delay. So yeah, it's frustrating because they didn't give a clear reason.

They didn't give mission objectives. They didn't give any kind of sense of when a next window would be a Y or anything like that. So yeah, maybe it's in the media kit, but I didn't see that. We're getting towards the end of the Changa missions though. I mean, there's Changa 8 has been talked about a bit, but that's the last mission named Changa that we know about, right? Yeah, that's right. So that would be an in-situ resource utilization mission. So that's around 2029. Some rumors that that's maybe canceled or being folded into the crude landing plans

because there was kind of a power struggle where CNSA and the China human space flight agency had a kind of power struggle over who's going to be in charge of the overall moon mission. So you know, it's CNSA in charge of the robotic side and CMSO in charge of spaceflight. And now that's being kind of merged under one umbrella. So, I mean, that kind of thing alone, that kind of, that the outcome of that will have implications in some ways that we just plain don't see and kind of make inferences by the things that go down and, you know, kind of after the fact. So it's just crazy because it's been almost 20 years of Changa missions either happening or being in development or, you know, having our focus in every couple years. There's there's something, even some of the extended missions have, you know, kept attention for a while as well. And it's about to be that error is coming to a close, which is interesting.

How do we feel currently about the human landing side of things? Like, you know, I feel like it gets talking about more in our media of like a thing. to be said in Congress in a scary way, but, you know, what's your view as someone following all the ins and outs on what the vibes are? No, I was hoping to get out of this without having been asked. No, come on. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know. I know.

So, yeah, I mean, I don't follow Starship kind of closely enough to know how that's going. But, I mean, on the face of it, when you look at how many missions they have to fly, how many, you know, refuelings and everything like that, right? It seems kind of prima facie, absurd, right? But it's kind of... Said like a typical European over there. You're speaking a language,

which is like basically three languages in the trench code, so, you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I don't care about it. I mean, I'm not knocking their plans. I'm just saying like, if you come in at it from just like not knowing much, right? And like, you're going to do what? Just to get to the moon, right?

It just looks crazy. But when you listen to them talk about it, it says, well, once we get it flying, you get flying properly, right? It's not an issue. Right? So it's kind of like, well, okay. So you can't really take that for granted, but it's just kind of like, that's the level ambition that they're working on, right?

So from this point to get into that point seems like very far away. seems quite distant, but maybe, you know, they're much more confident about that, right? So I would say that China has a much clearer path towards getting their astronauts on the surface, right? So that's, so it kind of looks like China knows exactly what it wants to do, the kind of number of missions that they have to do, the number of milestones they have to hit, it seems a lot more linear and doable. So, so yeah, it just looks like something on the face it that is a lot more kind of viable, right? But that's just me not kind of fully following what's going on with the Artemis program.

So, um, so yeah. One of the interesting aspects to that though is, is what we talked about earlier with the Long March 10 family that that feels like it's stabilized at this point because I, my, my memory of, of you maybe like five, six years ago is, uh, oh God, there's been another convention in China. and there's a brand new version of what the Long March 10 is or will look like, and this has a whole new architecture behind it. What is actually the plan now?

Like, it just seemed like the shapes and sizes of every launch vehicle and lander changed every six months for four or five years. And has that stopped? That seems to have gone away. Like, I mean, I think, did I see? I probably like just tried to ignore it or something. But I think there was a new version of the Long March 9. Like on the slide from like, there's this guy Long La Hau who comes, you know, just like,

guys like in his like mid to late 80s or something at this point. And he just goes on tours and like presenting the slightly different versions of the Long Match 9. It's great. Yeah, it's just so much fun. So it's like how much of this is official? This is this really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just like.

It would be a great prank if they were putting him out there just to keep you off base. Exactly. Don't feel sometimes. Yeah, that guy's stress levels are probably dropping. That's, yeah, let's hit him. Let's hit him again. Let's drop something new. But, yeah, it's, yeah, the sheer scale and breadth of the launch vehicle families in China.

It's amazing. So, I mean, there's people who put graphics together of these things, and it's just like, what? Yeah. They've always got a job. So much, yeah, so much fun. But I think that's literally the only, literally the only, signal I have is like that churn seems to have slowed down a bit so maybe things are stabilizing and they are moving forward with a particular direction I don't know yeah seems like people talk about it

like there's a it's a given they're going to land people in 2030 uh you know track that with your timeline comment a second ago that like China sets schedules and meets it they're they're like everyone else uh so i don't know 2030s sounds legitimate but i don't know about 2030 Yeah, but I mean, it's just great fun to kind of try to follow this and to have this kind of, well, I don't want to say race, but you know. That's a race. Everybody knows it. We all want to say, no, it's not a race this time, but I don't know. We need it. Yeah, but like, yeah, so Changa 7, 27, right? And the list of things that's happening next year in China is crazy.

So, what was it, Longmatch 10A debut, the debut of the Mungjo kind of new crude spacecraft, reuse of the Longmatch 10B, Tianwen 2, you forgot about that? Oh, yeah, I did. Exactly, it arrived. We got one kind of one dodgy picture, and then that's it. So who knows what they're up to? It's just like a number of updates on that is just insane. It's just, yeah.

So that's doing things right now, but it's completely off the radar because we have no insight. Shuntian space observatory, so that would be co-orbiting with Tieng, right? So that's like Hubble class kind of observatory with a, what was it, 300 times the field of view. So that's going to be great. What else do we have? Due to a 3, I guess. long March 12A and 12B will probably be making landing attempts in the coming months as well

so Palace 1 rocket from Galactic Energy is launching on September the 1st and there's lots more rockets coming as well from lots of companies so it's yeah it's full on mayhem and there's a new space white paper coming as well in the next few months which will kind of be giving us a bit more detail on what China's plans are for the next five years. So that's going to involve probably something on space resources, though probably very early level. What else?

Space infrastructure, like on orbit computing, all kinds of stuff. So, yeah, there's serious policy underpinnings to all the stuff that they want to do. So they're taking it very seriously. So, yeah. It's good stuff. That's keeping you busy. Where can people follow along if they're not reading Andrew Jones? Where would you point them? What is my Twitter handle?

I still use Twitter. AJ underscore FI. That's the one. You need a reminder. Andy Jones space on blue sky. So yeah, writing for SpaceNews, space.com, I-Tripplea Spectrum, Scientific American. and yeah, that's a person, I think.

And you should be here more frequently than every two and a half years. So we'll have you back. Of 2027. So good stuff, Andrew. Thanks so much for hanging out. Thanks. Anytime. Thanks again, as always to Andrew for joining me on the show and catching us up with what's

going on over in China. Hard to keep track of from the outside. And he does an amazing job at it. So definitely read his stuff if you are not following. along and obviously he'll come back here when things are happening so yeah that's it for the show today thank you all so much for the support for listening this episode was produced by 32 executive producers thanks to steve joe kim ryan tim dodd the everyday astronaut unis josh from impulse fred will and lars from agile miles o'brien tasha sacos lee warren russell stealth julian

Chris, the astrogators at SEE, Frank, Matt from Built, Theo and Violet, Joel, Donald, Pat, David, Jan, Matt, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support for listening, as always. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up, Anthony at Mainenginecutoff.com. If you want to join the group of supporters and get Miko Headlines, Mainenginecutoff.com slash support is where to go do that. But until next time, I think you'll be hearing from you very soon because I got some star-based Louisiana thoughts to go through with you.

So keep an eye out for that. Otherwise, I'll talk to you soon.