China Postpones Chang'e-7 Launch to Moon's South Pole

China postponed the launch of its Chang’e-7 probe to the Moon’s south pole on Sunday, August 23, just hours before the mission was due to lift off from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan Island. The China National Space Administration, which oversees the mission, announced the decision, saying the mission did not meet the conditions for launch and could not be carried out within this year’s planned window. According to China in Space, a specialized site that tracks the Chinese space program, the launch window opened no earlier than August 24 and closed on August 25.

The mission is designed to search for water ice on the Moon, study permanently shadowed craters at the south pole, and survey the resources and environmental conditions found there. The targeted landing site is a permanently sunlit point near Shackleton crater, at coordinates 123.4 degrees east and 88.8 degrees south. Chang’e-7 is the seventh mission in China’s lunar exploration program, named after the Chinese moon goddess. The previous mission in the series, Chang’e-6, brought samples from the far side of the Moon back to Earth in 2024, a first in the history of spaceflight.

According to China in Space, independently confirmed by a headline from Chinese state broadcaster CGTN, the probe was to launch aboard a Long March 5 rocket, tail number Y14. That detail does not come from the Associated Press report carried by Phys.org, which mentions the launch without naming the carrier rocket.

The China National Space Administration cited two decisive factors in its statement. The first was the weather forecast: tropical depression Narra had formed over the Gulf of Tonkin and was approaching Hainan, which, according to China in Space, would have ruled out launches from Wenchang after August 25. The second factor was celestial mechanics. The window for the probe to reach its target lunar orbit is tied to the 18.6-year lunar nodal cycle, which determines how often, and for how long, the path to the Moon’s south pole is available from Wenchang at all.

The agency also framed the decision in terms of general principles.

“The decision was made based on the principles of caution, reliability, and the mission’s absolute success.”

The statement also said the mission “does not meet the conditions for launch” and “cannot be carried out within this year’s planned window.” That wording, however, does not fully match what Chinese officials told international partners at a meeting near the launch complex on the same day, August 23: that the launch was being postponed by at least a month, into September. The agency’s official statement does not mention September or any specific new date, while the officials at the meeting gave a looser timeline. Sources available at the time of publication offer no more precise date within September.

The next favorable periods do not depend on the weather forecast alone. According to a paper by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, published in March 2025, the window for sunlight to reach the landing site near Shackleton crater is open, with gaps, from the second half of 2026 through mid-2034. The paper names November and December 2026 as the most favorable stretch, followed again by November 2027, with illumination between those points dropping to a level that would not permit a landing. Every landing attempt, China in Space notes, also requires the probe to spend about three months in lunar orbit before descent, so the target zone can be imaged under different lighting conditions and checked for hazards and geological changes.

The China National Space Administration has not yet announced additional details on the new launch date.