With Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft and its four crew nearing a splashdown off San Diego, Calif. after a spectacularly successful flyby of the moon, NASA’s plan to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years now seems almost unstoppable. But it may still be Chinese astronauts, rather than American ones, who will take the next fateful steps on the moon in the 21st century.
NASA’s Artemis II circumlunar mission has dominated the spaceflight calendar this year, with its crew reaching new heights and returning stunning views of Earth from deep space. Yet China has quietly been making its own large, if less headline-grabbing strides toward putting its astronauts on the moon.
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