BEIJING, July 10 — For all the noise about America’s renewed push to the Moon, China has been quietly assembling the industrial architecture to get there first. The China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the state-owned prime contractor that runs the country’s space programme, is now in the final stages of preparing its next-generation lunar rocket for a debut flight. The vehicle in question is the Long March 10B, a heavy-lift launcher developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a CASC subsidiary based in Beijing.
CALT was founded in 1957 and has designed all Long March rocket variants. Its chief designer for the Long March 10 series is Li Dong, a senior rocket scientist at CALT.
The Long March 10B is understood to be the crew-rated version of the new rocket line, intended to carry Chinese astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time. The programme represents a direct challenge to NASA’s Artemis architecture, though Chinese officials rarely frame it in those terms. The salient point, notably, is the engine.
The Long March 10B will be powered by the YF-100K, a liquid-oxygen/kerosene engine developed by the Academy of Aerospace Propulsion Technology (AAPT), another CASC subsidiary. The YF-100K is a clustered-engine design, with seven engines strapped together on the first stage to generate the thrust required to lift a crew capsule and lunar landing stack out of Earth’s gravity well.
AAPT has been testing the engine for several years, and Chinese state media have reported a series of successful static-fire trials at the company’s test facilities in Shaanxi province. The launch itself will take place from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island, China’s only coastal launch facility. Wenchang became operational in 2014 and sits at 19.6 degrees north latitude — significantly closer to the equator than China’s inland launch sites, giving rockets a useful boost from the Earth’s rotation.
It was built specifically to handle the larger, heavier rockets that China’s space ambitions now require. The site has already hosted launches of the Long March 5, the country’s current heavy-lift workhorse, and the Long March 7. CASC itself is a behemoth by any measure.
It employs over 170,000 people and reports annual revenue exceeding $30 billion. The corporation was founded in 1999, carved out of the former Ministry of Aerospace Industry as part of a broader restructuring of China’s state-owned defence and technology sectors.
Its workforce includes engineers, technicians, and assembly workers spread across dozens of research institutes and manufacturing plants. The sheer scale of the organisation means that even routine programme updates can involve thousands of personnel. China’s space programme is overseen at the policy level by the China National Space Administration (CNSA), a civilian agency established in 1993.
CNSA handles international cooperation and sets high-level strategic direction, but the actual design, manufacturing, and launch operations fall to CASC and its subsidiaries. The relationship is analogous to NASA contracting with Boeing or SpaceX — except that CASC is a state-owned monopoly with no domestic competition and a direct line to the Communist Party’s military-civilian fusion strategy.
For all the technical progress, the Long March 10B programme has not been without its difficulties. Chinese engineers have had to solve significant problems with engine combustion instability and heat management in the YF-100K cluster. The decision to use seven engines on the first stage — a configuration reminiscent of the Soviet N1 rocket from the 1960s — introduces complex vibration and pogo oscillation challenges that have delayed the programme.
Western analysts tracking Chinese space developments have noted that the ground-test campaign has been more protracted than initially expected. The broader context is worth keeping in mind. China has already landed two robotic missions on the Moon — Chang’e-3 in 2013 and Chang’e-4 on the far side in 2019 — and returned lunar samples with Chang’e-5 in 2020.
Those missions were managed by CNSA and launched on existing Long March rockets. The Long March 10 series is the next logical step: a human-rated system capable of delivering a crew to lunar orbit and, eventually, to the surface.
The Chinese government has not announced a formal landing date, but planning documents and statements from CASC officials point to the early 2030s as a target. What to watch next. The first integrated test flight of the Long March 10B from Wenchang is expected within the next twelve to eighteen months, assuming the remaining engine certification tests conclude without further delays.
If that flight succeeds, China will have demonstrated a crew-capable heavy lifter — something only the United States and, historically, the Soviet Union have ever achieved. The political implications, for a Western audience, are straightforward: the space race of the 2020s is no longer a bilateral contest between Washington and Moscow, but a direct Sino-American competition in which China is fielding increasingly credible hardware.
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