China Manned Space Agency

中国载人航天工程办公室

The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA), officially the China Manned Space Engineering Office, is the government agency that administers the China Manned Space Program. Public sources place it under the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission. According to CMSA, the Chinese government decided in September 1992 to implement the crewed space program with a 'three-step' strategy. The steps were crewed spaceships, then extravehicular activity, rendezvous and docking and a space laboratory, and finally a long-term crewed space station. That third step is the Tiangong space station. CMSA manages the program's systems, missions, astronaut flights and international cooperation, while the hardware is built mainly by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) academies.

Tiangong carries two robotic arm systems built by the China Academy of Space Technology (CASC's Fifth Academy). The core module arm on Tianhe, launched on 29 April 2021, unfolds to about 10 m and handles up to 25,000 kg on orbit. Its jobs include module transposition and assisted docking, capturing hovering spacecraft and supporting spacewalks. The Wentian experiment-module arm is about 5 m long, handles up to 3,000 kg and is used for exposed-payload care and handling. Both have seven degrees of freedom in a 3+1+3 shoulder-elbow-wrist layout. During the Shenzhou-13 spacewalk on 8 November 2021, astronauts installed a cascade adapter that lets the two arms be joined into one longer combined arm. The arms remain in routine use: on 16 March 2026 Shenzhou-21 astronaut Zhang Lu operated the station arm during a roughly seven-hour spacewalk.

Inside the station, the Xiaohang robot appeared on 1 January 2025 as China's first intelligent in-cabin flying robot for the space station. Crews use it with dedicated human-robot interaction software to study human-robot spatial relationships, robot behaviour and multimodal interaction. Astronauts direct it by voice to move and to photograph experiments and equipment. It has worked with the Shenzhou-19, -20, -21 and -23 crews. The Shenzhou-23 crew ran touch-interaction tests to refine its motion planning, and later upgrades are meant to add cabin inspection and inventory management.

For crewed lunar exploration, CMSA announced the names Mengzhou (new crew spacecraft) and Lanyue (crewed lunar lander) in February 2024, and the names Wangyu (lunar suit) and Tansuo (crewed lunar rover) in February 2025. Published papers describe Lanyue as a roughly 26-tonne lander with a propulsion module (one YF-58-1 engine) and a lander module with four variable-thrust YF-36 engines for final descent and ascent. A Lanyue landing and ascent test took place in August 2025. China aims to land astronauts on the Moon by 2030. In 2026, China said it would deeply integrate its crewed and robotic lunar programmes, and CMSA has since issued launch-campaign updates for the robotic Chang'e-7 mission. CMSA also co-guides the World Robot Contest-Space Robot Contest, which covers robots for station operation, on-orbit servicing and crewed lunar missions.