China is expanding an international coalition around a permanent lunar outpost, drawing 17 countries and organizations and more than 50 research institutions into its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) program, while the United States moves to reshape its Artemis plans. The competition is no longer theoretical. Both sides are now making concrete budget, hardware, and diplomatic moves aimed at establishing a lasting foothold near the moon’s south pole, where water ice could fuel deep-space missions for decades to come.
From Bilateral Deal to Global Coalition
The formal starting point for China’s lunar base ambition came on March 9, 2021, when CNSA Administrator Zhang Kejian and Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin signed an agreement committing their agencies to jointly build the International Lunar Research Station. Three months later, CNSA published an ILRS roadmap and a partnership guide, signaling that Beijing intended to recruit well beyond Moscow and turn a bilateral project into a broad, multi-decade program.
That recruitment has worked. According to a CNSA deputy director, 17 nations and organizations and more than 50 research institutions have now joined the ILRS effort. The breadth of that roster suggests that, despite U.S. export controls and the Wolf Amendment, which bars most NASA cooperation with China, Beijing has still attracted a sizable set of partners for lunar exploration. Instead, China has built a parallel network of partners willing to contribute instruments, data, and funding outside the American-led order.
Beijing has paired this diplomatic push with new domestic governance tools. Central authorities have issued space-related policy documents through official portals such as the State Council’s English-language platform, using them to promote deep-space exploration as part of broader national science and technology goals. Public search services like the government’s policy database now routinely surface lunar and planetary exploration plans alongside terrestrial industrial strategies, underscoring how central the moon has become to China’s long-term development narrative.
A Two-Phase Station Near the South Pole
Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program and director and chief scientist of the Deep Space Exploration Lab, has outlined a station divided into surface, orbit, and Earth segments. The plan unfolds in two phases, with a basic ILRS complex targeted for completion by 2035 at or near the lunar south pole. That location is not arbitrary. The south pole’s permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold water ice, a resource that could be converted into drinking water, breathable oxygen, and rocket propellant, making it the most strategically valuable real estate on the moon.
China’s 2024 lunar mission activity added operational credibility to these plans. Bill Nelson, who led NASA before stepping down, publicly expressed worry that China could try to block other nations from accessing the lunar south pole, according to a Wall Street Journal report on his comments about the risks of exclusion zones and de facto control. That concern reflects a deeper anxiety in Washington and allied capitals: whoever builds permanent infrastructure first could set the practical terms for who operates nearby and under what rules, even if formal treaties remain unchanged.
Nuclear Power as the Deciding Factor
Solar panels can keep a small lander alive for a few lunar days, but sustaining a permanent base through the two-week lunar night requires a different energy source. Both the China-Russia partnership and the United States are now pursuing nuclear reactors for the moon, and this race within the race may determine which side achieves true year-round operations first.
A Chinese space official stated in April 2025 that the China-led lunar base will include a nuclear power plant on the moon’s surface. “I hope this time both countries can send a nuclear reactor,” the official said, according to Reuters reporting, a comment that acknowledged earlier stalled talks on a joint space reactor. Russia separately announced plans for a nuclear power plant on the moon within a decade, intended to power joint Russian-Chinese research, according to a later Reuters dispatch that also noted the United States has its own lunar nuclear reactor plans.
If China and Russia deliver a working reactor before the U.S. does, the ILRS could offer continuous power to partner nations, an advantage that would strengthen its appeal regardless of diplomatic messaging. Countries weighing whether to align with the American-led framework or the ILRS will care less about abstract governance principles and more about which station keeps the lights on, runs communications relays, and supports heavy-duty resource extraction and science payloads.
Artemis Accords vs. ILRS: Competing Rulebooks
Washington’s answer to China’s coalition-building has been to codify its own vision for space norms. The United States has rallied partners around the Artemis Accords, a set of nonbinding principles covering issues such as interoperability, transparency, resource extraction, and the avoidance of harmful interference. Many countries have signed on, according to NASA’s Artemis Accords list, effectively endorsing a U.S.-centered interpretation of the Outer Space Treaty that permits commercial mining and the use of “safety zones” around lunar infrastructure.
China and Russia have criticized that approach as an attempt to legitimize unilateral claims under the guise of safety. The ILRS partnership documents emphasize “openness” and “mutual benefit,” but they also envision a China-led governance structure in which participants plug into Chinese launch, navigation, and communications systems. For many mid-sized space powers, the choice is less about ideology than leverage: joining the Artemis Accords risks dependence on U.S. systems and standards, while joining ILRS ties critical missions to Chinese and Russian hardware and political priorities.
Washington Responds With Budget Overhaul
U.S. policymakers have started to treat this alignment problem as a budgetary and programmatic challenge, not just a diplomatic one. The Trump administration’s FY2026 budget request for NASA explicitly frames lunar policy as a race, arguing that revitalized human spaceflight is necessary to “secure America’s leadership in space” and counter rivals. The proposal, summarized in a NASA budget release, calls for reshaping Artemis to prioritize a sustainable presence at the south pole, accelerate development of surface power systems, and expand opportunities for international and commercial partners.
In practice, that means shifting money toward landers, habitats, and in-situ resource utilization technologies that can compete with what ILRS promises. It also means rethinking timelines. If China and Russia are targeting a basic ILRS by 2035, U.S. planners face pressure to demonstrate more sustained operations in the 2030s, not just short “flags and footprints” missions. The budget rhetoric reflects an emerging consensus in Washington that symbolic firsts matter less than who offers the most reliable, affordable access to lunar resources and science over decades.
A Fragmenting Lunar Order
The result is a slowly fragmenting lunar order. On one side, the Artemis coalition is anchored in longstanding alliances and commercial partnerships, with an emphasis on private-sector innovation and open data. On the other, the ILRS network offers a route into deep-space exploration for countries that lack domestic launch capability or are wary of U.S. export controls. Many governments will try to hedge, signing on to high-level principles with Washington while flying instruments on Chinese missions or contributing components to ILRS infrastructure.
What makes this moment unusual is that the dividing line is not purely ideological. It runs through power grids, landing pads, and ice-rich craters. Whoever builds the first robust network of reactors, habitats, and communications nodes near the south pole will shape how future missions file flight plans, negotiate proximity operations, and define “harmful interference” in practice. Formal treaties will still matter, but the daily reality of lunar operations will be written by engineers and program managers as much as diplomats.
For now, China’s expanding ILRS coalition and the United States’ budget-driven overhaul of Artemis are converging on the same narrow strip of polar terrain. Behind the technical diagrams and policy communiqués lies a straightforward strategic question: if and when a truly permanent base switches on a nuclear power system and begins using local resources, whose flag will be on the power module, and whose rules will govern the traffic around it?
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
