China launches ambitious Chang'e-7 moon mission to hunt for ice at lunar south pole

In the ancient human dream of reaching beyond Earth, China now extends its gaze to the moon's most forbidding shadows — the perpetually dark craters of the lunar south pole, where temperatures fall to minus 203 degrees Celsius and ancient water ice may have waited, undisturbed, for billions of years. The Chang'e-7 mission, named for a mythological moon goddess, will deploy a lander, rover, and an unprecedented hopping probe to seek that frozen resource, which could one day sustain human life far from Earth. This uncrewed expedition is not merely a scientific venture but a deliberate step in a