Chang'e 4 cancelled :(

[xenomorph555]

Well this is slightly depressing, there will not be another landing/rover mission for the Chinese. Instead they will focus on Chang'e 5 sample return, but wait does that make Chang'e 5 now 4, or is that C5T1...

Oh and Chang'e 6 is also cancelled if Chang'e 5 (now 4, maybe..) succeeds. I hope the robotic program is replaced by a manned one!

[Lunniy Korabl]

I hope the robotic program is replaced complemented by a manned one!

Fixed that for you.

[xenomorph555]

Fixed that for you.

Ah yes thank you, that is what I meant, I would never wish for the robotic program to be cancelled but to be followed up would be nice.

[jwenting]

no surprise. They've shown they're the only ones can get to the moon now. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans, nor Europe, India, or Japan, took up the gauntlet when they launched their moon rover.

There's no political need any more to do more until such a day as someone else does start building something to best that, and that's a long way off so they're not going to "waste" money on more moon missions, at least not publicly.

Most likely they're going to prepare some hardware and mission profiles in secret so they can quickly react if any threat to their hegemony on the high frontier develops, but they're not going to launch until such a day as such is needed politically.

[Kryten]

no surprise. They've shown they're the only ones can get to the moon now. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans, nor Europe, India, or Japan, took up the gauntlet when they launched their moon rover.

India and Russia have been working on lunar lander missions for about a decade each. Were you expecting them to just pull one out of a shed somewhere? These things take time.

[Streetwind]

no surprise. They've shown they're the only ones can get to the moon now. Neither the Soviets nor the Americans, nor Europe, India, or Japan, took up the gauntlet when they launched their moon rover.

Try looking up the Google Lunar X-Prize. There's more than a dozen Moon landers heading over there in 2015, and some of those are student projects. Some of the first to launch, even, so they have a chance of actually winning the prize pool.

Just because nobody "took up the gauntlet" doesn't mean that nobody can do it. If you go to the gym for the first time and demonstrate to the ripped guy next to you that you can bench press a beginner level weight, does he really have to go ahead and prove that he can do it too? Even though he did that much and more years ago? The analogy is perhaps a little flawed (there's no 'beginner level' in lunar soft landing), but the point is: the countries who have already pulled off that much and more don't have anything to prove just because a newcomer demonstrates that they can join the club.

And the capability to do Moon missions isn't exclusively a government domain anymore either. Just as the private sector is taking over launch services, I bet that we will be seeing a private lunar soft landing succeed within the next 12 months. You can quote me on this