Long March 5 | Chang'e 8
China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation is targeting 2029 for Long March 5 carrying Chang'e 8 from 101, Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China, China. Launch Library files only the year, so the date is a placeholder. The date is still provisional and can move.
COUNTDOWN
FLIGHT PLAN
There's no launch window filed yet. Current date is a placeholder or rough estimation based on unreliable or interpreted sources.
FIELD KIT / OPTICS
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MISSION BRIEF
Chang'e 8/CE-8 is scheduled to launch in 2028, including a lander, a rover and a legged robot. The mission will land in the South Pole regions of the Moon to study lunar surface environment around the South Pole and experimenting with resource utilization, including testing an enclosed terrestrial ecosystem in the lunar environment.
SOURCE: LAUNCH LIBRARY 2 // THE SPACE DEVS
LAUNCH CORRIDOR
- Due east
- The lowest inclination a direct launch from here can reach is 19.6°. That’s this pad’s own latitude. Flying east also gets the most free speed from Earth’s rotation.
- Due south
- The polar corridor, at 90° inclination, passes over both poles. It gets no help from Earth’s spin, so the same rocket can carry less.
Drag the globe to turn it. The shading is the real terminator, and it moves.
A globe of the Earth centred on 101 at latitude 19.61 degrees north, longitude 110.95 degrees east. Two curved lines leave the pad. The solid gold line runs due east and marks the lowest orbital inclination a direct launch from this site can reach, 19.6 degrees, equal to the pad’s latitude of 19.6 degrees. The dashed cyan line runs due south and marks the polar corridor at 90 degrees inclination. The darkened part of the globe is the night side. The surface wind is from 45° at 19 km/h. That's the cyan arrow at the pad.
LAUNCH SITE
101
Wenchang Space Launch Site, People's Republic of China, China
OBSERVED 2026-11-11 10:15:00Z // OPEN-METEO (CC BY 4.0) // GENERAL CONDITIONS, NOT LAUNCH CRITERIA
Minimum direct inclination 20°. This pad is 20° north of the equator, so a direct launch can't reach an orbit inclined less than 20°. An orbit of inclination i never passes over latitudes beyond ±i. Getting to an equatorial orbit, which geostationary satellites need, takes a 20° plane change at some point in the flight. Inclinations of 20° and up are reachable straight off the pad. The ground here moves east at about 438 m/s with Earth's spin. That's 465 m/s at the equator, falling with the cosine of latitude. A launch due east keeps that head start.
DATUM WGS-84 // EQUIRECTANGULAR PROJECTION // ORBIT FIGURES DERIVED FROM THE PUBLISHED LATITUDE
Open this pad in a mapPAD CONDITIONS
SURFACE WIND @ 10 M
19km/h
Blowing from the north-east, bearing 45 degrees
GUSTING
39km/h
Partly cloudy
SOURCE: OPEN-METEO CC BY 4.0
The observed figures are general weather at the coordinates of 101. They aren’t the launch rules. The operator and the range write those for each mission, and they cover things this forecast doesn’t carry, like electric fields, cloud layers higher up and winds along the rocket’s path. Only the operator publishes them. Wind often stops a countdown, but no number here is a limit for this flight. Nothing here is a go or no-go call. No operator figure was published for this attempt.