China Scraps This Year's Chang'e-7 Moon Launch a Day Before Liftoff

China's Manned Space Agency (CMSA) cancelled a planned Monday launch of the Chang'e-7 mission on Sunday, saying in a brief statement that mission headquarters had concluded "the lunar expedition cannot be carried out within this year's scheduled launch window as it had failed to meet launch criteria." The agency did not specify which criteria were unmet, though some Chinese outlets reported that bad weather -- torrential rain ahead of a typhoon in Hainan, where the launchpad is located -- was the reason.

Chang'e-7 is designed to send a lander to a region near the Moon's south pole believed likely to contain ice in deep craters. The lander carries a wheeled rover and a hopper, which China wants to test for its ability to jump over crater rims to search for ice and continue exploring. An accompanying orbiter is meant to help the ground vehicles send data home and carry out its own observations.

The spacecraft is built to survive multiple lunar nights, the roughly two-week stretches without sunlight during which temperatures can drop below minus 200 degrees Celsius in shadowed areas, and it carries technology intended to enable precision autonomous landing on the Moon's chaotic south pole terrain. Richard de Grijs, a professor of astrophysics at Australia's Macquarie University, has said the mission is significant because it represents "a transition from simply exploring the Moon to determining whether its resources can actually be used," since researchers are not searching for signs of water but trying to determine where lunar polar water is located, in what form, and whether it could realistically be accessed.

CMSA said the decision to cancel this year's launch was made "in accordance with the principles of prudence, reliability and absolute safety," and noted that launch windows allowing flights to the Moon's south pole occur only once or twice a year, with none remaining available in the current window.