The space race was still a thing when I was a kid but it hasn’t been for much of the last 45 years. But that’s starting to change as Russia, India, China and the US all gear up for various missions to the moon. In fact, both Russia and India have lunar landers touching down next week.

Russia’s Luna-25 lander could touch down as soon as Monday, August 21. It’s the country’s first lunar mission in nearly half a century, and the first in the post-Soviet era. Two days later, on August 23, Chandrayaan-3 could become India’s first successful lunar lander. (Its predecessor failed in 2019.)

Both missions are aiming for the moon’s south pole region, a site of increasing international interest because of the presence of water ice that could be extracted for oxygen or rocket propellant. It also includes critical spots known as “peaks of eternal light,” which receive near-constant solar illumination that could power future missions and moon bases…

Both landers come equipped with scientific instruments, including ones for studying the minerals in the lunar regolith and scanning for signs of water ice. Each four-legged lander is about the size of a small car and weighed about 3,900 pounds at liftoff—most of that weight was propellant. After departing from lunar orbit, both will make their final, autonomous descent from about 100 kilometers above the ground.

The backstory here is that India launched its Chandrayaan-3 lander about a month ago using a series of maneuvers to gradually put it in orbit around the moon:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
Chandrayaan-3 completes its orbits around the Earth and heads towards the Moon.

A successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit.

Next stop: the Moon 🌖

As it arrives at the moon, the… pic.twitter.com/myofWitqdi

— ISRO (@isro) July 31, 2023

The lander is now orbiting the moon having separated from the propulsion module. These images were posted today:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:

View from the Lander Imager (LI) Camera-1
on August 17, 2023
just after the separation of the Lander Module from the Propulsion Module #Chandrayaan_3 #Ch3 pic.twitter.com/abPIyEn1Ad

— ISRO (@isro) August 18, 2023

However, it will be a few more days before the lander is on the ground:

Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
The Lander Module (LM) health is normal.

LM successfully underwent a deboosting operation that reduced its orbit to 113 km x 157 km.

The second deboosting operation is scheduled for August 20, 2023, around 0200 Hrs. IST #Chandrayaan_3#Ch3 pic.twitter.com/0PVxV8Gw5z

— ISRO (@isro) August 18, 2023

Meanwhile, Russia launched its rival lander, Luna 25, last Thursday but because it’s taking a different path to the moon it could land two days before India’s lander does. Here’s the Russian liftoff:

#Luna25 is a Russian lunar lander mission that launched on August 10, 2023, from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia. It is the first Russian lunar mission in 47 years, and the first of a series of missions that will pave the way for a crewed return to the Moon in the 2030s. pic.twitter.com/tqX7vrfEni

— The Cosmos Book (@TheCosmosBook) August 11, 2023

As of today the Luna 25 is also in lunar orbit:

Russia's Luna-25 moon lander snaps 1st photo of lunar surface https://t.co/Okw38roHAK pic.twitter.com/21jbdwMwTO

— SPACE.com (@SPACEdotcom) August 17, 2023

Space missions aren’t known for making decisions on the fly but it must be tempting for India to try to accelerate its landing schedule by a couple days so they can touch down first. The outlines of the Russian mission have been planned since the 1990s but because of the war in Ukraine it’s unlikely Russia will be able to follow it up anytime soon. The real space race this decade is between China and the US.

NASA and its international and commercial partners have already launched the first mission of the Artemis program. The uncrewed Artemis 1 orbited the moon in late 2022, and NASA plans to send astronauts into lunar orbit in 2024. In 2026, it plans to send people to the moon’s surface for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Ultimately, the US is gearing up for a
permanent presence on the moon, including a moon base and the Lunar Gateway space station…

China has taken its own path with its ambitious Chang’e program. That began with a lunar orbiter in 2007 and was followed by other orbiters, a lander, and then a rover in 2019. Chang’e 5 successfully sent moon samples back to Earth in 2020. China plans Chang’e 6, another sample-return mission, for 2024, followed by the Chang’e 7 rover in 2026. Like the US, China plans to have a  permanent presence on the moon with its International Lunar Research Station at the moon’s south pole, planned for construction in the 2030s.

The US has organized a set of rules for exploring the moon called the Artemis accords:

During the Trump administration, US officials drafted the Artemis Accords—rules for lunar exploration which, although developed by a single nation, could shape the future of moon outposts, colonies, and space mining. The administration announced the accords in May 2020, at a time when it wasn’t even clear whether the Artemis program would continue under a different president…

The accords lay out a US-led vision for exploring the moon and beyond—their scope includes Mars, comets, and asteroids—with some guidelines for what future robotic spacecraft and astronauts should and shouldn’t do. For example, actors are supposed to use space only for peaceful purposes, share scientific data with the public, and demarcate safety zones around their lunar activities. The accords also elevate commerce to the same level as scientific exploration.

It sounds nice but China and Russia have not joined the accords so there’s some concern that if they put people on the moon first they may try to claim specific territory as their own.

[NASA Administrator Bill] Nelson said he has concerns that China could try claim the territory if it gets there first.

“I don’t want China to get to the south pole first with humans and then say, ‘This is ours; stay out,'” Nelson said, noting that the U.S. is part of a multinational agreement to share resources in space. China isn’t.

“I think the space race is really between us and China, and we need to protect the interests of the international community,” Nelson said.

Seizing territory is what China has been doing in the South China Sea for years. We probably can’t expect them to act differently on the moon. At present the US is expected to send astronauts to the moon as soon as 2025 while China isn’t expected to do the same until 2030. But given the growing tension between the US and China it wouldn’t surprise me if China tried to accelerate their plans to turn this into a real space race.