Two space missions from India and Russia will land next week at the moon’s unexplored south pole It puts on the table the growing interest of various powers to restart their lunar programs with renewed objectives: establishing bases and using resources for commercial purposes.
The United States, China or several countries of the European Union are currently preparing a return mission to the Moon through the European Space Agency (ESA). This includes the prospect of astronaut-manned ships called to set foot on the lunar surface again, something that hasn’t happened since 1972.
Curiosity, which predates lunar orbits, is now in charge of collecting all kinds of data that will help future missions, and those that India and Russia hope will successfully attempt their first lunar landing next week. At the South Pole of the Moon.
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In search of water
India sent its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft to the moon on July 14, it entered lunar orbit on August 5 and plans to make a tentative landing on the moon’s southern tip on the 23rd of this month. The Asian nation will become the fourth country to touch Earth’s satellite after the US, Russia and China.
The Russian mission Luna-25 took off on August 11 and entered lunar orbit yesterday, resuming the country’s lunar program that stalled in 1976 when Russia was part of the Soviet Union (USSR). It will last until the moon descends on the lunar south pole on August 21.
The two probes will be stationed in different parts of the satellite’s south pole and their main objectives are to improve lunar landing maneuvers and take samples from the surface, including what they suspect is water in the form of ice. Get some sunlight.
The largest number of space missions around the Moon is expected to add ten more missions in the next three years. It shows the growing interest of countries in the satellite, with goals more ambitious than those of Chandrayaan-3 and Luna-25.
“While previous missions were primarily aimed at scientific exploration, future efforts may involve multiple actors with diverse interests, primarily driven by exploiting resources for commercial purposes,” the space agency said in a statement this month.
But in addition to its resources, there are those who look to the moon as an intermediate step to resupply probes en route to other destinations in space, such as Mars.
A jump to other planets
The US space agency (NASA), along with Canada, the European Union and other countries, is planning a second mission of its Artemis program to return to the moon in 2024, with which they intend to collect data and build a base camp. To tackle deep space missions to Mars and beyond.
American astronauts Reid Wiserman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch and Canadian Jeremy Hansen will orbit the moon and see the south poles, a little-known part of the satellite, from the Orion capsule. Water is critical to confront future colonialism.
Later, theNASA envisions a new mission in 2025, Artemis 3, that would mark the return of humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years after the Apollo-17 astronauts last left the satellite in a spacecraft in 1972.
China announced last spring that it had already begun the “manned moon landing phase” of its lunar exploration program, a goal it plans to achieve before 2030, and which would make the Asian giant the second country to achieve it after American astronauts set foot. Satellite for the first time in 1969.
China, which is barred from accessing some US-led international initiatives like the International Space Station because of military ties to its space program, plans to build a scientific research base at the satellite’s south pole over the next decade. Working in collaboration with the Russian Space Agency.
The future lunar station, scheduled to become operational in 2035, is expected to carry out studies to learn more about galaxy formation and activity and to answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe.
Challenges Ahead
Increasing traffic to the Moon, especially ships that must remain in its orbit for several years, presents various challenges to scientists at various space agencies.
The Indian agency recently warned of the need for its experts to perform maneuvers to avoid collisions between the orbits of two different probes.
A risk that could create “effective coordination between agencies to avoid critical connections in lunar orbit.” Each time a new mission approaches or attempts to land on the moon many analyzes are required.
Add to this the complexity of landing maneuvers, which cause mission accidents and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Last April, when Japanese space agency ISpace failed to become the first private mission to land on the rough lunar surface, technicians lost contact with the spacecraft before reaching their destination and were unable to restore it.
India suffered a similar blow in 2019 when its current probe’s predecessor, the Chandrayaan-2 mission, crashed into the moon due to technical issues during the landing phase, postponing the Asian nation’s dreams until this year. Finally for terrestrial satellite.
EFE
