China's moon exploration program is readying an ambitious robotic mission, one composed of an orbiter, a lander, a rover, a hopper, and a wide range of international experiments including a U.S.-supported payload.

In April of this year, Chang'e-7 hardware was transported to the Wenchang launch site, targeting an Aug. 24 (Beijing time) launch atop a Long March 5 Y14 rocket. The lander's destination is the edge of Shackleton Crater in the lunar south pole region.

After launch, the Chang'e-7 orbiter will spend several months orbiting the moon before releasing its lander for an attempted touchdown near the end of the year. While Chang'e-7 will carry out ambitious, groundbreaking lunar science, it will also serve to lay the groundwork for the first Chinese human landing on the lunar surface by 2030.

James Head is a leading moon scientist at the department of geological sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He says China's upcoming moon launch will set a new benchmark for lunar science voyages.

"Chang'e-7 is the most ambitious, comprehensive, and complex robotic lunar mission ever attempted by any nation or entity," Head told Space.

Likewise, Zhang Jingbo, a spokesman for the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) agency, said earlier this year that the mission will "fully leverage the technological expertise and practical experience accumulated over decades" to "spare no effort to strive for the goal of achieving the first Chinese landing on the moon by 2030."

Pockets of water ice

Once unleashed from the Chang'e-7 lander, the hopper is slated to "jump" from sunlit areas to shadowed craters in a quest to find pockets of water ice. The hopper utilizes active shock-absorption technology to safely land on slopes. The lander will also deploy China's inaugural deep-space "landmark image navigation" system.

While scientists around the globe believe there's water ice on the moon, said Ye Peijian, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, no one has definitively found and fully evaluated that resource as yet.

"Now China is going to look for it, […] And we're using many methods, from searching the surface to exploring inside craters," Ye told China Central Television (CCTV).

Back-to-back duties

The Chang'e-7 mission will adopt an integrated exploration approach, added CCTV, combining orbiting, landing, roving, and hopping, to survey the environment and resources of the lunar south pole, while also carrying out international cooperation.

Moreover, a Chang'e-8 mission is set for around 2028, designed to test technologies for building habitats using lunar soil.

Taken together, the two robotic projects ?— Chang'e-7 and Chang'e-8 ?— are assigned duties to assist in orchestrating China's planned, multi-phased, International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).

Variety of instruments

Chang'e-7 mission hardware is outfitted with a variety of instruments from other nations and organizations, such as:

• On the lander, a Russian Academy of Sciences' PmL-Ch7 suite to detect lunar dust and a Langmuir probe to gauge the temperature and density of nearby plasma.
• An Italian laser retroreflector array on the lander is provided by the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati.
• A small, state-of-the-art, wide-field optical telescope mounted on the lander developed by the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA Hawaii) and the Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong (HKU-LSR).
• LunaHcam, a camera attached to the Chang'e-7 orbiter and jointly developed by the Bahrain Space Agency and the Egyptian Space Agency to churn out high-resolution hyperspectral images of the moon's surface.
• Moon Aiming Thai-Chinese Hodoscope (MATCH) onboard the orbiter and developed by the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. It will assess high-energy particles related to space weather and cosmic radiation tossed out by the sun.
• Moon-based Dual-channel Earth Radiation Spectrometer on the orbiter has been provided by Switzerland's Physical Meteorological Observatory.

Compact lunar camera

The ILO-C instrument from ILOA Hawaii and the Laboratory for Space Research at the University of Hong Kong will be housed directly on the Chang'e-7 lunar lander, bound for the illuminated rim of Shackleton Crater.

"The HKU Lab for Space Research is proud to partner with ILOA for this historic lunar mission and we look forward to working with them to maximize the scientific return this exceptional wide field optical lunar camera will deliver," said Quentin Parker, professor emeritus of the University of Hong Kong.

Through visible color imaging, the ILO-C camera project aims to spark public interest in lunar exploration, astronomy, and space science, Parker said, thereby laying a social foundation for future lunar science missions.

Moon-based vantage point

Operating in the extreme lunar environment, the compact camera will conduct first-ever astronomical color imagery from the moon, said Elisa Perednia, President and Chair of ILOA. The camera is designed to capture unprecedented wide-field, full color imagery of the Milky Way's Galactic plane from a stable, moon-based vantage point, she said.

One sad note: The camera onboard China's moon lander was pioneered by ILOA's founding director Steve Durst who passed earlier this year. He was a visionary leader that worked with Chinese aerospace representatives since the 1980s.

The Beijing Institute of Space Mechanics & Electricity (BISME) built the camera to ILO-C team member specifications.

"We are proud to have joined the mission and to help realize Steve's wonderful vision," Parker at HKU-LSR told Space.com.