China and Russia’s International Lunar Research Station roadmap still targets the construction phase to begin in 2026, following a reconnaissance phase that started in 2021 and site selection expected by 2025; the construction window is described as roughly a decade long, running through 2035, with crewed missions projected around 2036 if the plan holds.[2][1] The publicly described architecture breaks the program into three phases: reconnaissance, construction, and utilization.[1][2]
Technically, the ILRS plan implies that a lunar base can be staged through robotic precursor missions, site surveying, cargo delivery, power and communications buildout, and then sustained human operations; that sequence is the clearest current blueprint for a south-pole settlement architecture.[1][10] For the Lunar Ark, the critical lesson is that survival-grade lunar habitation depends on early resource mapping, high-reliability energy, autonomous logistics, and phased system validation before any crewed permanence is attempted.[1][10]
Ark teams should monitor ILRS precursor mission timing, especially China’s Chang’e-7 and Chang’e-8 and Russia’s Luna missions, because these are the likely hardware and ISRU testbeds that will reveal what lunar construction actually scales.[6][8][9] The Ark should also extract design rules from ILRS planning for power, thermal control, comms, cargo cadence, and governance of multinational surface infrastructure, because those are the bottlenecks that decide whether a lunar refuge can become civilizationally durable.[4][8][10]