The Long March 10 is the rocket China plans to use to send astronauts to the Moon. It’s a three-core, kerosene-fueled heavy-lift vehicle rated at 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit and 27 metric tons toward the Moon. China’s stated goal of landing astronauts there before 2030 depends on it. At liftoff, 21 engines fire.
But the rocket has yet to reach orbit. As of September 2026, it has completed a low-altitude flight test and several ground firings, while one variant has flown and successfully recovered a booster. The crewed configuration itself has not yet flown.
Long March 10 Specifications
| Measure | Long March 10 |
|---|---|
| Height | About 92.5 meters |
| Core diameter | 5 meters |
| Liftoff mass | About 2,189 metric tons |
| Engines at liftoff | 21 YF-100K, seven per core |
| Liftoff thrust | Roughly 26,000 kilonewtons |
| Second stage | Two YF-100M engines |
| Third stage | Three YF-75E hydrogen engines |
| Payload to low Earth orbit | 70,000 kg |
| Payload to trans-lunar injection | 27,000 kg |
| Launch site | Wenchang, Hainan |
| Builder | China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology |
Three Cores of the Same Rocket
The Long March 10 does not use purpose-built strap-on boosters. Its two side boosters are the same 5-meter core as the center stage, each with the same seven YF-100K engines. Building one stage and flying three of them per launch cuts tooling and production cost, and it means a single production line feeds both the crewed rocket and its smaller variants.
That choice also explains the engine count. Twenty-one engines is a large number to light at once, and clustering that many raises the odds that one fails during ascent. The offsetting benefit is that seven engines per core is enough redundancy to lose one and continue, and that the YF-100 family already has a long flight record on the Long March 5, 6, 7 and 8.
The Variants Do Different Jobs
Three members of the family share the Long March 10 name and very little else.
- Long March 10 is the three-core crewed lunar vehicle at 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit.
- Long March 10A drops the side boosters and flies as a single core, rated at about 14 metric tons to low Earth orbit. It is aimed at crew rotation to the Tiangong station and at heavier satellite work, taking over jobs the CZ-2F and CZ-7 do today.
- Long March 10B is the reusable version. It recovered its first stage in a net on a sea platform on 10 July 2026, making China the second country to bring back an orbital-class booster, according to SpaceNews.
The 10B result matters to the crewed program indirectly. Every recovered booster is a stage China does not have to build, which relieves the production pressure of a lunar campaign that needs two launches per landing.
Two Launches per Moon Landing
China’s crewed lunar architecture splits the mission across two Long March 10 flights rather than one large rocket. One launch carries the Mengzhou crew spacecraft. A second carries the Lanyue lunar lander. The two dock in lunar orbit, the crew transfers to the lander, descends, and returns the same way.
That approach lowers the rocket requirement at the cost of launch reliability. A single-launch mission fails if one rocket fails. A two-launch mission has twice the exposure and adds a docking that has to work far from Earth. It is also why 27 metric tons toward the Moon is enough: neither payload has to carry the other.
The full architecture, including the Mengzhou capsule and Lanyue lander, is covered on the China Moon landing 2030 page.
Why the Long March 10 Launches from Wenchang
The Long March 10 launches from Wenchang because a 5-meter stage cannot travel by rail. China’s three older launch centers sit inland, and their hardware arrives through tunnels sized for the narrower rockets of the 1970s. Wenchang is coastal, so stages arrive by ship at whatever diameter the design needs.
Latitude adds to the case. Wenchang sits near 19 degrees north, closer to the equator than Jiuquan at about 41 degrees, and a launch closer to the equator collects more free speed from Earth’s rotation. For a rocket sending 27 metric tons toward the Moon, that difference is worth real payload.
The third reason is where debris falls. Stages dropped on an eastward launch from Wenchang land in the South China Sea rather than on farmland, which the inland sites cannot avoid. Site-by-site details are on the Chinese launch sites page.
The Test Record So Far
Testing has moved through ground firings toward flight, one step at a time.
- Tethered ignition tests confirmed the seven-engine cluster could start, throttle, and shut down while the stage stayed anchored.
- A zero-altitude abort test of the Mengzhou spacecraft demonstrated the escape system could pull a crew capsule clear of a rocket on the pad.
- Integrated landing and takeoff verification of the Lanyue lander tested the descent and ascent sequence on Earth.
- A low-altitude demonstration flight of the Long March 10 system took place at Wenchang on 11 February 2026, per CGTN.
Chinese officials have said the Long March 10, Mengzhou, Lanyue, the Wangyu lunar suit and the crew rover have all completed the main work of the prototype stage. Work in 2026 has shifted toward ground infrastructure at Wenchang: pads, tracking, communications, and a landing site.
The YF-100K Engine Doing the Work
The YF-100K is an uprated version of the engine that already flies on most of China’s modern rockets. The base YF-100 burns kerosene with liquid oxygen in a staged-combustion cycle, the same broad approach Russian engines pioneered, and it entered service on the Long March 5, 6, 7 and 8. The K variant raises thrust for the lunar rocket.
Building the crewed vehicle on a flying engine rather than a new one removes a large source of schedule risk. Engine development usually costs heavy-lift programs years, because a new turbopump or combustion chamber failure sends the whole rocket back to the test stand. China spent that time earlier, on the smaller rockets.
The tradeoff is performance. Kerosene delivers less energy per kilogram than the liquid hydrogen NASA uses in the SLS core, which is part of why the Long March 10 lifts less to low Earth orbit while reaching a similar payload toward the Moon. The full side-by-side sits on the Long March 10 vs SLS page. For the underlying mechanics, see how rocket engines work.
What Would Change the Timeline
The uncrewed orbital test flight is the event to watch. Until the three-core configuration flies, every schedule for a 2030 landing rests on ground tests and one low-altitude demonstration. A successful orbital flight would leave crew rating and the lunar-orbit docking rehearsal as the remaining large unknowns.
A failure would be costly in a specific way. With two launches needed per landing and a fixed deadline, China has limited room to lose vehicles and still fly the rehearsal missions a crewed attempt requires.
To track the next Long March 10 test, check the mission announcements published by the China Manned Space Agency, which releases the crewed program’s flight schedule directly.