The United States is about to wake up to the threat from China's space program

The mission will pack a punch: It contains a lunar orbiter with high-resolution cameras and other sophisticated tools, a lunar lander, a lunar rover, and a mini-hopper of a probe. Although the lander’s mass has not been disclosed publicly, it is several times larger than the NASA-backed probes that have recently landed on the Moon, such as Firefly’s Blue Ghost.

But what is most notable about Chang’e 7 is where the probe is going. It will land near one of the most compelling regions of the Moon, Shackleton Crater, very nearly at the South Pole. Much of the lunar surface is pretty barren, but the South Pole, and Shackleton Crater in particular, offers some of the most coveted real estate there.

This is because the high rims of the crater create permanently shadowed regions known as “cold traps,” where it’s thought that water (in the form of ice, of course) and other useful materials may have accumulated over billions of years. In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the South Pole of the Moon matter the most.

The impact of all this

Humans have been flying missions to the Moon since 1959, when the Soviet Union’s Luna 1 spacecraft passed within several thousand kilometers of the lunar surface. But in all that time, across more than 100 successes and failures, no spacecraft has ever landed at the South Pole of the Moon.

So we’re faced with the prospect of a Chinese rover rolling around this most interesting but heretofore unexplored region of the Moon. Undoubtedly, there will be stunning images and videos. And the rover and hopper, if successful, will provide the best available data on the presence and prevalence of water there.