In a group consultation , Yang Liwei , deputy director general of China Manned Space Agency and China ’s first astronaut in 2003 , said they were making “ preliminary cooking for a man lunar landing place , ” reportedXinhua .

Like the manned Apollo mission , this spacecraft would be launched in dissimilar parts , namely the man condensation and the lunar lander . Xinhua take these would then rendezvous in lunar orbit .

The manned lunar landing design was also confirmed by Wu Yansheng , president of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation ( CASC ) . A statement from Chinalast yearsuggested they were desire to do this by 2036 .

Other details are few and far between at the minute . But the land has been making great stride in distance , both remote-controlled and manned exploration .

At the same conference , China said they hadfour new crewed missionsplanned over the next five years . The land is also planning to start building its first permanent blank space station in 2019 , the Chinese Space Station ( CSS ) . It currently has an experimental space laboratory called Tiangong-2 in orbit .

This yr , they will also select a third group of astronauts , comprising 10 to 12 people , two of which will be charwoman ( it ’s unclear if these have already been take ) .

These astronauts will move to the CSS for three to six month to perform scientific research . They will have more of a science backdrop than former Chinese astronauts , known as taikonauts .

China has send 11 taikonauts to space so far , with the most recent coming last October on theirShenzhou-11 delegation .

And all of this seems to be leading towards China ’s ultimate goal of land humans on the Moon . It ’s a slenderly different approach than the US took in the 1960s , however . Back then , the US performed back - to - back missions in Earth electron orbit before guide to the lunar surface ; they did not build their first space station , Skylab , until after Apollo 17 in 1972 .

China has big plans for the Moon . Aside from man mission , it already has a scope that ’s useable on the surface , and may cover to do so for30 class , having land as part of the broad Chang’e-3 mission in 2013 . In 2018 , it hopes to land a probe on thefar side of the Moon , something no one has done before , and it also want to send a missionary work toreturn a lunar samplein November this yr .