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By Sue NelsonFeatures Correspondent
fake imagesFive decades after the last of the Apollo missions, the Moon is once again a target of space exploration. But NASA no longer has lunar exploration to itself.
The number of astronauts who walked on the Moon has not changed in more than 50 years.
Only 12 human beings have had this privilege – all Americans – but it will soon increase. The historic binational competition between the American and Soviet space agencies for lunar exploration has become a global quest. Launching missions to orbit the Moon or land on its surface are now being carried out by governments and commercial companies from Europe and the Middle East to the South Pacific.
Despite the success of the United States’ Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, to date only five nations have landed on the Moon. China is one of the most ambitious nations that has the Moon in its sights.
After two successful orbital missions in 2007 and 2010, China landed the unmanned vehicle Chang’e 3 in 2013. Six years later, Chang’e 4 became the first mission to land on the far side of the Moon. The robotic Chang’e 5 returned lunar samples to Earth in 2020 and Chang’e 6, launching in May this year, will bring the first samples from the far side of the Moon.
The country’s ambitions do not end there. “China openly aspires to send a couple of its astronauts to the Moon before 2030,” says space journalist Andrew Jones, who specializes in the Chinese space industry.
“There are demonstrable advances in a number of areas necessary to carry out such a mission, including the development of a new human-capable launch vehicle, a next-generation manned spacecraft, a lunar lander, and expanding ground stations,” Jones says. “It’s a tremendous task, but China has shown that it can plan and execute long-term lunar and human spaceflight projects.”
fake imagesNot surprisingly, delays to the US space agency NASA’s lunar program have recently been announced. Sagebrushwhich has delayed plans to land astronauts on the lunar surface until September 2026 at the earliest, has produced the phrase “Moon Race” between the United States and China.
“I think China has a very aggressive plan,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a media conference call about the revised Artemis time scale. “I think they would like to land before us, because that might give them some PR. But the fact is, I don’t think they will.”
China, of course, may also experience delays in its release schedule. “China needs a super-heavy launcher to start putting large pieces of infrastructure on the Moon,” Jones says. “Is Long March 9 rocket project has undergone changes, so this may delay the first missions from 2030 to the early to mid-2030s.”
India became the fourth country to land on the Moon with unmanned vehicles Chandrayaan-3 in August 2023, which landed near the lunar south pole. Following its success, the president of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that he intends send astronauts to the Moon by 2040. (Find more about The mysteries of the lunar south pole and why so many nations want to land there in this article by Jonathan O’Callaghan..)
Meanwhile, the Japanese Slim (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) mission recently placed its Moon Sniper lander on lunar soil to become the fifth nation in our closest neighbor. The Japanese space agency, jaxais also nearing the end of negotiations to land a Japanese astronaut on the Moon as part of the U.S. Artemis program.
Other countries – such as Israel, South Korea and numerous member states of the European Space Agency (ESA) – have also placed robotic spacecraft in lunar orbit. NASA recently announced that the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) provide an airlock for Gatewayits planned lunar orbit space station for the Artemis missions.
The reasons for going vary: from scientific knowledge and technological advances to the prospect of accessing potentially useful lunar resources and political or economic value. The UK space industry, for example, was extremely strong during the recession.
But in such a crowded field, the big question is who will become the next major global player in the next phase of lunar exploration. It will no longer be the exclusive domain of national space agencies; Commercial companies also want to get in on the lunar action.
fake imagesAlthough China launched the first commercial mission to the Moon in 2014, the small privately funded mission Lunar mission in memory of Manfred was a microsatellite (61 cm x 26 cm x 10 cm) for a lunar flyby built by LuxSpace in Luxembourg. However, the first commercial lunar mission planned by the United States was much more ambitious.
In January of this year, the Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic launched the Peregrine 1 Mission. It was the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. Unfortunately, shortly after the launch there was a “critical loss of propellant.” meant that he had to return home without landing and burned in the earth’s atmosphere over a remote part of the South Pacific Ocean.
As a result, the next US trade mission, Intuitive machines IM-1which launched on February 15 and intends to place its Nova-C lander on the Moon, has moved from second place to potentially first place.
“As partners in advancing lunar exploration, we understand and share the collective disappointment of unforeseen challenges,” said Intuitive Machines President and CEO Steve Altemus. “It is a testament to the resilience of the space community that we continue to push the limits of our understanding, accepting the risks inherent in our quest to open access to the Moon for the progress of humanity.”
The United States declared the Moon a strategic interest in 2018. Does Altemus see its commercial mission as the beginning of a lunar economy? “At that time, there were no lunar landing modules or lunar programs in the United States,” he says. “Today, more than a dozen companies are building landers, which is a new market. In turn, we have seen an increase in the construction of payloads, scientific instruments and engineering systems for the Moon. We are seeing the economy starting to catch up. because there is a possibility of landing on the moon. Space is a huge human endeavor and will always contain a government component because they have a strategic need to be in space. But now there is space, so “First time in history, for commercial companies. to be there.”
In recent years, India has also seen a boom in space startups like Pixel, Dhruva Space, Bellatrix Aerospace and Hyderabad’s. Skyroot Aerospacewhich launched India’s first private rocket in 2022.
POTIn October 2023, a private Australian company, Hex20announced a collaboration with Skyroot Aerospace and the Japanese ispace, which will attempt its second robotic moon landing later this year. The collaboration aims to stimulate demand for affordable lunar satellite missions.
But when it comes to the Moon, footprints and flags on the ground still generate the biggest headlines. The four astronauts who will enter lunar orbit on Artemis II – NASA’s Christina Hammock Koch, Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover, plus Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, all appear in the immersive London experience. Moonwalkers show.
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Written by British filmmaker Chris Riley and actor Tom Hanks (who played astronaut Jim Lovell in the film Apollo 13), it highlights the collective NASA effort required to land astronauts on the Moon and anticipates that Artemis will do the same.
I recently watched the show sitting next to an upcoming guest in the Space Scientist Podcast: Former NASA Apollo flight director Gerry Griffin. He later called the Artemis program “wonderful.”
“I’m worried about financing,” he says. “It will always be a problem.”
But Griffin is optimistic and has complete confidence in his astronauts. “We have the best. They’re really good. But we have to move on. It’s time to come back.”
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