Chinese researchers have presented a new map of the moon, updating a previous edition based on new scientific findings and recalibrating the moon's ancient geologic eras.
The comprehensive map of the moon, with a scale of 1:5 million, was unveiled by the Institute of Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (IGCAGS) on Aug. 6. The map is an update of a 2024 edition and puts forward new boundaries for the ancient Aitkenian, Nectarian and Imbrian lunar periods. (The researchers use the term Aitkenian, whereas the term pre-Nectarian is often used to describe the lunar geologic period from roughly around 4.5 billion to 3.9 billion years ago.)
The map also uses reprocessed spectral data to update areas of KREEP terrane, which features crustal material enriched in potassium (K), rare-earth elements (REE), and phosphorus (P), and is found to be more continuous and abundant than previously estimated.
Chinese researchers released a super-detailed new map of the moon on Aug. 6, 2026. (Image credit: CCTV/IGCAGS)
"The lunar geologic history has indeed been rewritten — more precisely, refined and systematized," the state-run outlet Xinhua quoted Yang Zhiming, director of the IGCAGS, as saying.
Both the United States, through the Apollo missions, and the Soviet Union delivered lunar samples to Earth more than 50 years ago, greatly shaping research on and understanding of the moon. China's own robotic sample return missions, Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6, launched in 2020 and 2024, respectively, have provided fresh materials and new insights.
Chang'e 6 was the first sample-return mission to the lunar far side. Chinese researchers say the returned material will provide a new starting point for scientific discussions on the nature of that hemisphere of the moon, which is hidden from view on Earth.
The map "introduces a proprietary cartographic standard," according to Xinhua, amid a wider, Chinese government-driven initiative to influence global standards. In terms of space, aspects of the map such as the color scheme, geologic logic and an aesthetic "lighter for younger, darker for older" principle will be applied more broadly as China looks to expand its exploration beyond the moon and into the outer solar system.
"This goes beyond showcasing technological soft power. This standard will be extended to future planetary geologic mapping, establishing an independent intellectual property framework for China's deep space exploration," Yang said.
Both China and the United States have interests in setting standards as humanity renews its interest in exploring the moon. While on Earth everyone agrees on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the two countries currently disagree about what time it is on the moon, where clocks run faster due to weaker gravity. This suggests that leadership in space will be contested not just through missions and firsts, but via whose technical standards are followed, with China's new map playing into these efforts.
The Chinese commercial launch company Landspace is set for a second attempt at catching an orbital booster.
The startup launched its first Zhuque-3 rocket in December 2025, in what was a milestone for Chinese rocket reusability efforts. While the Zhuque-3 second stage successfully reached orbit, the first stage exploded in a dramatic fireball during its final powered descent toward the landing pad.
Now, Landspace is poised for a second attempt at liftoff and landing, with airspace closure notices indicating that launch is scheduled from the Dongfeng commercial space innovation pilot zone at Jiuquan spaceport, in northwest China, at around 7:45 p.m. EDT on Aug. 10 (23:45 GMT, or 7:45 a.m. Beijing time, Aug. 11).
UPDATE | ZhuQue-3 Y2 Reusable Launch Vehicle Completed Static Fire TestOn June 29, 2026, LandSpace's ZhuQue-3 Y2 reusable launch vehicle successfully completed a static fire test at the Dongfeng Commercial Space Innovation Pilot Zone.The test comprehensively verified the… pic.twitter.com/G9EzZbnyqBJune 29, 2026
The company conducted a successful static fire test on June 29 in preparation for the launch.
"All systems operated normally, and test data and results met expectations, validating the correctness and coordination of system operations and laying a solid foundation for upcoming flight missions," Landspace stated in a post that day on the social media platform X.
Zhuque-3 is a 216-foot (66-meter) stainless steel rocket powered by methane-liquid oxygen engines. It's similar in capabilities to SpaceX's Falcon 9, and is capable of sending 40,350 pounds (18,300 kilograms) of payload to low Earth orbit (LEO).
The Aug. 10 launch will be China's fourth orbital booster recovery attempt. The first was the Zhuque-3 launch in December 2025; the second was the debut, just days later, of the Long March 12A, which also reached orbit but with a first-stage recovery attempt ending in flames. The third try, using the Long March 10B, took place on July 10. That one was successful: China made history, becoming just the second country to land an orbital booster, in this case using a vessel equipped with a net-capture system.
Landspace, when it makes its expected second attempt next week, will use a powered descent and landing legs, similar to the Falcon 9.
Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft returned spectacular images of a near-Earth asteroid following a super-close flyby on July 5, but heated debate was needed before teams signed off on the daring attempt.
When images of the asteroid Torifune arrived on the morning of July 6 Japan time, Makoto Yoshikawa and his team at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) got two surprises at once. Torifune turned out to be a contact binary, in which two chunks of rock have come together under gravity, and the returned images were also larger than hoped.
"We did not imagine such a contact binary," Yoshikawa, former mission manager of Hayabusa2, told scientists gathered at the Asteroids, Comets and Meteors conference in Poznan, Poland, on July 10. "Originally, we didn't think we could have such a very big image. Maybe we will take a very small one, but the image was much larger than we expected."
The asteroid Torifune as seen by Hayabusa2's Mid-Infrared Camera during the July 5 flyby. (Image credit: JAXA)
The double surprise was the payoff of months of debate between science and engineering teams, and a last-minute proposal that alarmed some of the scientists it was meant to serve. In the end, the flyby was so close as to be at the very edge of what the aging spacecraft was designed to conduct.
Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Ryugu four years later. The spacecraft collected samples and delivered them to Earth in 2020, completing its primary objectives. JAXA then made plans for an asteroid flyby and a rendezvous with the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031.
Usually for flybys, the closest distance is 100 kilometers (62 miles), Yoshikawa said, but in Hayabusa2's case this would not be close enough to gather good images. Hayabusa2 was designed for rendezvous and proximity operations, including hovering, correcting and landing — not for a high-speed pass at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second). Its cameras were also not designed for high-speed slewing.
According to Yoshikawa, science team members pushed back. At a distance of 100 kilometers, Hayabusa2's cameras would barely resolve the asteroid's global shape. Engineering responded with a proposal of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). Science said that was acceptable, but the team kept pushing. Eventually, engineers confirmed they could get to within 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of the asteroid's center. "Science people were very happy, because they could have a nice photo," Yoshikawa said.
Then, just one month before the flyby, extended mission team leader Yuya Mimasu proposed going even closer. "Yuya Mimasu said the closest distance should be 800 meters," Yoshikawa recounted. "Some science people said 'No, it's too dangerous,' and a very heated discussion started."
One major issue was the unknown size and dimensions of Torifune and the safety of the spacecraft. The team had assumed a worst-case asteroid size of 1,400 meters by 400 meters (4,600 by 1,300 feet) based on ground-based observations. A pass 800 meters (2,625 feet) from the center of the target would sit just outside that exclusion zone. The spacecraft's optics had also been affected by dust from sampling Ryugu. The final navigation analysis put the targeting error ellipse at around 200 meters (656 feet). "The distance fixed is 800 meters," Yoshikawa said, "but this is quite a big challenge for us."
Hayabusa2 detected Torifune on June 19. The spacecraft used ground-based guidance up to three hours before the flyby, before switching to onboard guidance. "This is quite new," Yoshikawa said. "We developed software for this, and we sent it to the spacecraft."
The result was the stunning, up-close imagery of the dual-lobed Torifune, captured by the probe's Optical Navigation Camera Telescope (ONC-T). But all four of Hayabusa2's science instruments returned data. The Thermal Infrared Imager (TIR) captured nine seconds of thermal imaging between 09:29:50 and 09:29:59 GMT on July 5, just a second before closest approach, independently confirming the contact binary structure in heat emission.
A size comparison between asteroid Ryugu, which was visited by Hayabusa2 in 2020, and its next target, 1998 KY26. (Image credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser. Asteroid models: T. Santana-Ros, JAXA/University of Aizu/Kobe University)
The Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRS3) and laser altimeter (LIDAR) also got data, with the latter delivering what Yoshikawa described as possibly the first successful LIDAR ranging measurement during an asteroid flyby. But while the most urgent 25 MB of data was downlinked, teams will need to wait months for the rest of the 300 MB of total science data. Hayabusa2's ion engine system restarted on July 9 to begin the cruise toward two Earth flybys in 2027 and 2028 and will fire for around four months. Only after this can the rest of the data be sent to Earth.
Yoshikawa explained that the Torifune flyby was more than just a bonus milestone and photo and science op. The successful super-close flyby means that "JAXA has acquired the technology to collide spacecraft with a small celestial body," he said in his closing remarks at ACM, drawing a parallel to NASA's DART mission. "This flyby mission can be said to serve as a demonstration of the fast reconnaissance concept in planetary defense," verifying the ability to characterize an unknown asteroid rapidly — a capability that could provide crucial information ahead of an impactor mission.
This is not the end for Hayabusa2. The ultimate destination for the spacecraft's extended mission is the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26, a roughly 36-foot-wide (11 m), rapidly rotating rock with which it is scheduled to rendezvous in 2031.
China has announced that it wants to develop a "space-ground" asteroid early-warning network, while providing few details on what it could look like. But recent papers and presentations to the United Nations provide clues as to what the country has in mind for planetary defense.
The China National Space Administration (CNSA) made the announcement on June 30 — International Asteroid Day — stating plans to construct a coordinated ground-and-space monitoring system for near-Earth asteroids. Li Mingtao, chief scientist at CNSA's Asteroid Monitoring and Early Warning Research Center, told state media that China is studying the feasibility of an asteroid defense system, with the ground-space monitoring network as its core.
"No asteroid has so far been identified that will definitely collide with Earth in the foreseeable future, but concerns over impact risks are not unfounded. Many near-Earth asteroids remain undetected," the state-run media outlet Xinhua quoted Li as saying in a report by Science and Technology Daily.
Li added that China will deploy multiple large-aperture optical telescopes at carefully chosen sites in order to be able to survey the sky, while adding a space-based monitoring constellation, free from atmospheric disruption and day-night constraints, with a particular focus on threats from the sunward direction, which are, from the ground, lost in the glare of the sun. The meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, approached roughly from a sunward direction and was only detected once it entered the atmosphere.
Li told Science and Technology Daily that more than 40,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered so far, including over 95% of asteroids at least 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide, which are capable of causing a globally catastrophic impact. However, only around 45% of asteroids in the 140-meter (460-foot) class have been detected, which are large enough to devastate a small country.
The June 30 reports and CNSA statements were vague on what China's actual plans for its monitoring network may be. However, recent journal papers and a 2025 presentation to the U.N.'s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) give more detail on the country's thinking.
For example, a paper published in the Journal of Deep Space Exploration in June 2026, co-authored by Wu Weiren, chief designer of China's lunar exploration program and a leading voice on the country's asteroid defense plans, lays out the options under study.
For the space-based component, the paper names four candidate orbital positions for a monitoring network: the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point, an Earth-leading or trailing orbit, a Venus-like heliocentric orbit, and an Earth-companion distant retrograde orbit (DRO). The paper also describes ongoing research into each option's monitoring effectiveness.
In 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, which orbits a larger asteroid named Didymos, and changed the binary system's orbit around the sun. (Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)
A similar outline was found in a 2025 technical presentation to COPUOS by Chinese researcher Chen Yongcai. A "basic model" would consist of a single satellite at Sun-Earth L1, an orbit about 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) inside that of Earth, paired with northern and southern ground stations. An "extended model" includes spacecraft in the three additional orbits stated in the Wu Weiren paper. The Venus-like option in particular closely tracks an earlier proposal known as CROWN, a constellation of small satellites in Venus-like orbits designed to survey the sunward sky and use its favorable geometry to track other populations of near-Earth asteroids.
The status and timelines of these plans are unclear, but they do indicate a clear interest in and commitment to planetary defense by China. The country's 15th Five-Year Plan, approved in March, states that an asteroid defense engineering project is under study, while China is developing a kinetic-impact and observation demonstration mission, similar to NASA's DART mission and the European Space Agency's (ESA) follow-on Hera project, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.
While China's apparent plans are not unique, they could augment global efforts. Anne Virkki, an asteroid researcher at the University of Helsinki who's familiar with international monitoring efforts, noted that NASA and ESA have plans to send missions to Sun-Earth L1 to search for asteroids in infrared light — NEO Surveyor and NEOMIR respectively.
"If China launches a similar mission, hopefully it has some capability that the other two do not, and that it shares the data internationally and not only for Chinese scientists," Virkki said.
Virkki noted that asteroids approaching from the sun's direction aren't physically unusual, but they are simply harder to track, which statistically makes them more likely to produce a surprise. She also pointed to the persistent, less-discussed gap in radar tracking capacity. That capacity took a serious hit with the 2020 collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, with no U.S. successor in the works.
China has discussed building its own radar capability, which Virkki said would be a welcome addition, provided the data is shared openly. China has built the "China Compound Eye" or Fuyan project near Chongqing in the country's southwest, which can be used for near-Earth asteroid monitoring. Wu's paper also notes ground-based radar in the proposal for asteroid monitoring.
"Hopefully, as China's planetary defense plans become more specific, we'll see telescopes and space telescopes that complement the existing or planned capabilities of other countries, rather than repeat redundantly, and contribute data openly and collaboratively," Virkki said. She noted that there are likely about 100,000 near-Earth asteroids that could cause significant local damage if they hit Earth, and we know the orbits of less than half of all such space rocks.
2029 will mark the International Year of Planetary Defense, when the infamous asteroid Apophis will fly past the Earth just within the orbit of geostationary satellites. "There is a lot of work left to do, and international collaboration is crucial," said Virkki.
Japan's Hayabusa2 sample-return spacecraft is on target to make one of the closest ever flybys of a near-Earth asteroid in early July, as part of its extended mission campaign.
Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and rendezvoused with the asteroid Ryugu four years later. The spacecraft collected samples and delivered them to Earth in 2020, completing its primary objectives. But the hardy spacecraft still has bold plans to deliver new and exciting science data.
The spacecraft has been operating well, despite needing to briefly enter a protective safe mode last year, and now is set to make a flyby of the asteroid Torifune on July 5, Satoshi Tanaka of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said in a presentation on Hayabusa2 during the 35th Meeting of the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) on June 11.
The flyby will see Hayabusa2 get within 1 to 10 kilometers (0.62 to 6.2 miles) of Torifune, using its instrument suite to study the roughly 450-meter-wide (1,476 feet) asteroid as it whizzes past at 5.3 kilometers per second (3.3 miles per second).
"This is one of the closest asteroid encounters ever attempted by a mission of this class," Tanaka said. "By combining advanced navigation techniques and the engineering capabilities of Hayabusa2, we have made it possible to achieve a flyby at a distance of only about 1 kilometer."
Torifune was first given the designation 2001 CC21 before being named for a deity from Japanese mythology. Tanaka says the asteroid is somewhat similar to Itokawa — the target of Japan's first Hayabusa mission — but little is known for sure about Torifune, adding a level of uncertainty to this extended mission objective.
"It's still a risky operation, because they had not planned for this," Patrick Michel, the principal investigator for the European Space Agency's Hera asteroid mission and part of the Hayabusa2 science team, told Space.com. "The second thing is that we have a high uncertainty on the size of the object," he added, with the dimensions of the asteroid unknown.
The asteroid could, for example, be a contact binary, according to Michel, in which two separate bodies came together at low velocities. Known contact binary small bodies include the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, imaged by NASA's New Horizons, and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, described as a "rubber duck" when visited by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft.
"We're going to discover what it looks like. And each time we have seen a new asteroid, we've been surprised," Michel said. "We're going to discover another beast to put in the zoo of asteroids."
The very high velocity of the flyby means there will be limited time to collect images and other data on the asteroid, but the rapid encounter will also provide a useful test for planetary defense, as well as adding to planetary science.
The flyby, using advanced navigation techniques to guide and control the spacecraft, will be a useful test of a rapid reconnaissance concept that could be used to determine the physical properties of an asteroid. Such reconnaissance could provide vital information before intercepting a threatening asteroid with a kinetic impact, as demonstrated by NASA's DART mission in 2022.
Tanaka said that Hayabusa2 has been busy during its deep space cruise phase, including making observations of the zodiacal light and exoplanets, and the Torifune flyby will, hopefully, not be its final act. The ultimate goal of the Hayabusa2 extended mission is to visit the tiny asteroid 1998 KY26 in 2031, which would be the smallest asteroid ever visited. The spacecraft could even attempt to land on the miniscule world, which is just 11 meters (36 feet) wide.
China is set to expand its space station from three to six modules in the coming years and add a co-orbiting Hubble-class space observatory, even as the International Space Station approaches the end of its lifetime.
The three-module, T-shaped Tiangong space station was assembled in orbit across 2021 and 2022 and has hosted numerous three-astronaut Shenzhou crews, but China is now set to expand the orbital outpost with new modules, citing growing research demands and more frequent crew and cargo missions. As previously reported by Space.com, the planned expansion will see Tiangong grow into a "double-T" shape, with the addition of the multipurpose module and two new experiment modules, and allow China to extend the scale of operations aboard the station.
"This expansion has always been part of the original plan," Qian Hang, a researcher with China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), told Chinese media. State media Xinhua reported that the first phase of the expansion will see the launch of a new 20-ton-class multifunctional module, which will dock with Tiangong's Tianhe core module.
Additional docking ports on the new modules will allow Tiangong to welcome more spacecraft and provide greater operational flexibility when needed. "If the missions get more intensive, we risk 'queuing' for docking ports and lack sufficient emergency buffer space," Qian said.
China is developing new, low-cost cargo options for Tiangong, while its new Mengzhou spacecraft, which could debut later this year, can carry seven astronauts to low Earth orbit. The Shenzhou spacecraft, which is currently used for China's crewed missions, can carry three astronauts to Tiangong.
Before the arrival of a new module, however, the first new addition to Tiangong is expected to be Xuntian, a bus-sized space observatory with a 2-meter (6.6 feet) diameter primary mirror, slightly smaller than that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Xuntian is scheduled for launch in 2027 and boasts a field of view around 300 times larger than that of Hubble, meaning it will be able to study and map around 40% of the heavens during its planned 10-year lifetime using its 2.5-billion-pixel camera. Xuntian will share a similar orbit with Tiangong, meaning it will be able to dock with the space station for maintenance, refueling, repairs and potentially upgrades.
Screenshot from an animation showing Chinese astronauts servicing the Xuntian Space Telescope outside the Tiangong Space Station. (Image credit: CCTV)
While the U.S. is mulling a variety of plans for commercial stations that host astronauts in orbit after the ISS is retired, China would have the largest permanent outpost in orbit with Tiangong. According to Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station system, the planned expansion would take Tiangong from a mass of 90 tons to 180 tons.
The head of the European Space Agency has issued a wakeup call to decision makers amid partners cancelling missions and geopolitical changes affecting the space sector, calling for Europeans to be pilots rather than passengers.
"Europe has become too exposed to decisions beyond its control," Aschbacher wrote, before laying out the challenge the continent faces. "The choice before Europe is clear: Do we pilot, or are we merely passengers?"
The situation for ESA and its 23 member states is complex, requiring Europe to both develop agency and autonomy while balancing this with fruitful collaboration, Aschbacher noted.
"The current environment demands both diversified international partnerships and strengthened autonomous capabilities," he wrote. "Only under these conditions can Europe decide when to act independently and when to cooperate globally, protecting our investments and our industrial base amid geopolitical uncertainty."
With trust in the U.S. as a reliable partner taking a hit, collaboration with other space actors such as Japan, South Korea and Australia could grow, while Europe also pursues its own capabilities.
Human spaceflight is one area Aschbacher is keen to push Europe forward, describing it as a necessity rather than a luxury, and one needed to secure ESA's freedom to unlock the "scientific, economic, strategic and geopolitical benefits of space and to inspire a new generation to shape Europe's future."
The question is not new — it has long been debated by European policy makers and the space sector — but recent events and Aschbacher's comments have brought the issue to the fore. And there is clear support and grounds for greater European autonomy in space.
"The disruption brought by the Trump administration has made this question more pressing," said Marco Aliberti, associate manager and lead on international engagement at the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) in Vienna, an independent think tank that advises European space policymakers. "There is a realization in Europe that so far we have not been pursuing autonomy."
Europe, Aliberti argued, has built genuine technical capacity, including the ability to build and operate world-class space systems, but, at the same time, has consistently failed to secure the political autonomy to decide how and with whom those capabilities are deployed.
"Participation without agency is yet another form of dependency dressed up as ambition," he said. In other words, Europe has built the capacity to execute in space, but not the autonomy to decide its own agenda.
Aliberti pointed out that this is not the first time Europe has needed to move to acquire greater autonomy. The birth of Europe's Ariane rocket in the 1970s was a response to an asymmetric relationship. The United States refused to launch the Franco-German Symphonie communications satellite unless Europe agreed to forgo commercial use, with the aim of protecting American dominance in commercial communications. European governments concluded they had no choice but to build their own launch capability.
Aliberti went on to point out that history could, potentially, repeat itself, this time in the lunar realm, as a European partner dependent on U.S. transportation could face unacceptable conditions. "The U.S. may tell us: I will continue bringing you to the lunar surface, provided that you do not engage in commercial activity," he said. "We do not see the risks that being a passenger entails."
And investment in space can bring huge payoffs. For example, NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contracts in the 2000s gave early funding to SpaceX, enabling the development of the company's workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, and ultimately, the rise of its Starlink broadband megaconstellation.
"It was the billions that NASA gave to SpaceX that enabled the birth and growth of SpaceX," Aliberti stated. "Let's not neglect the impact that space exploration investment has across other parts of the ecosystem."
Eartly artist's illustration of the major parts of a planned NASA-ESA Mars sample return campaign. NASA has canceled that version of the project and is looking for other ways to get samples collected by its Perseverance rover back to Earth. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
ESA's DG has signaled the need for action and its urgency, although he admitted it will take years to build autonomous capability. "If not now, then when? If not ESA, then who?" Aschbacher asked.
What comes next is unclear. Institutionally, Aschbacher sees opportunities in a convergence of key meetings and milestones, including an ESA Council in mid-June, a ministerial focused specifically on exploration scheduled for December, and the crucial once-every-three-years ESA Ministerial Council in 2028. At the same time, the European Union, with a growing interest in space separate to ESA, is drafting its Multiannual Financial Framework for 2028-2034.
Aliberti warned that, if ESA cannot act promptly, its member states could move to act alone to address shorter-term needs. He cited the recent development of the French government reaching an agreement to send a pair of its astronauts on missions with U.S. space station firm Vast.
As confidence in the partnership with the U.S. government erodes, individual European nations may look to explore bilateral arrangements with commercial American providers, meaning less interest in investing into joint European efforts. The window for collective European action is open, but perhaps not for long.
"If we take decisions by the Ministerial Council in 2028, we will be able to play a role and be pilots in 10 years," Aliberti says. "If not, it may become too late."
