China's Chang'e-7 Lunar Mission Hunts for Water at Moon's South Pole

In the ancient darkness of the Moon's south pole, where craters have held their frozen secrets for billions of years, humanity is reaching once more toward the unknown. China's Chang'e-7 mission — named for a lunar goddess — will dispatch a lander, rover, and an unprecedented hopping probe to search for water ice that could make permanent human settlement beyond Earth not merely a dream, but an economy. The mission is both a scientific endeavor and a geopolitical declaration, as Beijing and Washington each maneuver to be the first civilization to plant lasting roots on another world.