Originally published on The Daily Flare.
From Artemis crews to Chinese water hunters, 2026 is the busiest year for moon missions in decades. This tracker maps every national lunar program, milestone by milestone.
Half a century after Apollo, the Moon is crowded again. The United States flew astronauts around it for the first time since 1972. China readied the first spacecraft designed to hunt water ice at the south pole. Private companies are landing there too, some upright and some in pieces. This is not one program against another. It is a half-dozen national lunar programs running at once, each with its own rockets, landers and timelines.
That makes lunar exploration hard to follow, so this tracker keeps it simple: the milestones each country hit in 2025 and 2026, where every program stands today, and what launches next.
Moon Missions in 2026: The Milestones So Far
NASA's year belonged to Artemis II. On April 1, 2026, an SLS rocket lifted Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen toward the Moon, and the Orion capsule carried them around it on a loop lasting 9 days, 1 hour and 32 minutes before splashing down in the Pacific on April 10. It was the first crewed lunar flyby since Apollo 17 in December 1972, and the first flight of Orion with humans aboard.
Two months earlier, NASA had redrawn the roadmap. On February 27, 2026, Administrator Jared Isaacman announced that Artemis III would no longer attempt a landing. Instead it becomes a crewed rendezvous and docking rehearsal in low Earth orbit, targeted for late 2027, where Orion will practice meeting the commercial landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. The first Artemis surface landing moves to Artemis IV in early 2028, with Artemis V targeted for late 2028.
The commercial side delivered the biggest surprise of the decade. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost landed upright in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025, operated through a full lunar day of about 346 hours, activated all 10 of its NASA science payloads and sent back 119 gigabytes of data. It was the first fully successful commercial Moon landing in history.
Not every private lander shared that luck. Astrobotic's Peregrine never reached the Moon in January 2024, lost to a propellant leak hours after launch. Intuitive Machines landed twice and tipped over twice: Odysseus in February 2024 and Athena near the lunar south pole in March 2025. Japan's ispace lost its Resilience lander on descent in June 2025 when a laser rangefinder failed.
China's headline this year was a delay, not a launch. Chang'e 7, the ambitious south-pole mission carrying a lander, a rover and a hopping robot built to sniff out water ice, was scrubbed in August 2026 as a typhoon threatened the Wenchang launch site. The slip pushed it to no earlier than early 2027.
Russia's program, meanwhile, slipped further into the future. Its Luna-26 orbiter, intended to map the Moon in high resolution and scout landing sites, was formally delayed to 2028.
National Lunar Programs: The Country-by-Country Tracker
| Country / Agency | Key mission | Status | Next milestone |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA / NASA | Artemis | Crew flying; landing targeted 2028 | Artemis III docking test, late 2027 |
| USA / CLPS companies | Blue Ghost 1 | Landed upright, Mar 2025 | Griffin-1 lander, Nov 2026 |
| China / CNSA | Chang'e 6 | Far-side samples returned, 2024 | Chang'e 7, early 2027 |
| India / ISRO | Chandrayaan-3 | South-pole landing, Aug 2023 | Chandrayaan-4 sample return, 2027-28 |
| Russia / Roscosmos | Luna-25 | Crashed, Aug 2023 | Luna-26 orbiter, 2028 |
| Europe / ESA | Argonaut | Descent element contracted | First landing (ArgoNET), 2031 |
| Japan / JAXA | SLIM | Precision landing, Jan 2024 | LUPEX with India, Sep 2028 |
United States (NASA). Artemis remains the flagship: the SLS rocket, the Orion capsule, commercial landers and a growing network of international partners. After Artemis II proved the crew systems, the near-term program is deliberately methodical, with a docking rehearsal in 2027 before any attempt at the surface in 2028. Alongside it, the CLPS program keeps buying robotic deliveries from private firms: Astrobotic's larger Griffin lander is due to launch in November 2026, and Firefly's second Blue Ghost mission is stacked for early 2027.
China (CNSA). The Chang'e program owns the strongest robotic record of any nation this decade: the first landing on the lunar far side (Chang'e 4, January 2019), a near-side sample return (Chang'e 5, December 2020), and the first far-side sample return (Chang'e 6, June 2024). Chang'e 7's water-ice survey at the lunar south pole is next, followed around 2028 by Chang'e 8, which will test making construction materials from lunar soil. Both missions feed the International Lunar Research Station being planned with Russia and partner countries. Separately, China says it will land astronauts on the Moon before 2030.
India (ISRO). Chandrayaan-3's August 2023 touchdown made India the first country to land near the lunar south pole. Next is Chandrayaan-4, a sample-return mission targeting 2027-2028 that would bring up to 3 kilograms of regolith home. Then comes Chandrayaan-5, better known as LUPEX, a joint mission with Japan planned for September 2028: India supplies the lander, JAXA supplies a roughly 250-kilogram rover, and together they will prospect for volatiles including water ice at the pole.
Russia (Roscosmos). The program is rebuilding after Luna-25 crashed in August 2023, Russia's first lunar attempt in nearly 50 years. The Luna-26 orbiter has slipped to 2028, the Luna-27 south-pole lander is now expected in 2029-2030 at the earliest, and a Luna-28 sample-return mission sits around 2034.
Europe (ESA). The Argonaut lander will be Europe's first: a Thales Alenia Space-led consortium won the contract to build the descent element in January 2025, delivery is set for 2030, and the first operational mission, ArgoNET, is expected in 2031 carrying up to 1,500 kilograms of cargo.
Japan (JAXA). The SLIM lander touched down in January 2024 with the most precise landing ever attempted, making Japan the fifth country to soft-land on the Moon. Japan's next big lunar move is the LUPEX mission with India, plus a pressurized rover for the Artemis program being developed in coordination with ESA.
What Launches Next: Lunar Missions to Watch
Late 2026 belongs to the robots. Astrobotic's Griffin Mission One is scheduled to launch in November 2026 on a Falcon Heavy. If it lands intact, it would double the number of fully successful commercial Moon landings.
2027 is the crowded year. Chang'e 7 should make its second attempt at the south pole early in the year, Firefly flies its second Blue Ghost mission, and Artemis III is targeted for late 2027 as a crewed docking rehearsal. India aims Chandrayaan-4 at the 2027-2028 window for its sample return.
2028 could be the year humans land again. Artemis IV is targeted for early 2028 as the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17, with Chang'e 8 and the LUPEX mission also on the calendar, alongside Russia's Luna-26 orbiter. Treat every date as a target rather than a promise.
The pattern to watch is the south pole. Every program is converging on the same permanently shadowed craters and the water ice they may hold. Whoever maps and reaches that ice first gains the high ground of the next era of exploration. That is what these moon missions are really racing toward.
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