New Delhi (EFE) databases and the use of resources for commercial purposes.
The United States, China, or several countries of the European Union through the European Space Agency (ESA), are currently preparing return missions to the Moon, which include the prospect of ships manned by astronauts called to set foot on the lunar surface again, something that has not happened since 1972.
An interest that is preceded by the emerging presence of orbiters on the Moon, currently six, in charge of collecting all kinds of data that help future missions, and which India and Russia have anticipated, which next week will try to complete successful first moon landing at the south pole of the Moon.
in search of water
India launched its Chandrayaan-3 space mission to the Moon on July 14, which entered lunar orbit on August 5 and plans to land on the moon definitively at its southernmost point on the 23rd of this month, which would make the Asian country in the fourth nation that would have managed to touch the earth’s satellite, after the United States, Russia and China.
The Russian mission Luna-25 took off on August 11 in what meant the resumption of the lunar program of this country, which had been paralyzed since 1976, when Russia was still part of the Soviet Union (USSR), and entered lunar orbit yesterday , where it will remain until attempting the moon landing at the south pole of the Moon on August 21.
Both probes will be deployed in different areas of the south pole of the satellite and their main objectives are to improve the moon landing maneuvers and take samples from the surface, including water in the form of ice that they suspect can be located in craters that never receive sunlight. sun.
The presence of this large number of space missions around the Moon, to which another ten are expected to join in the next three years, shows the awakening of the interest of a growing number of countries in the satellite, with even greater goals. ambitious than those of Chandrayaan-3 and Luna-25.
“While previous missions were essentially intended for scientific explorations, upcoming ventures are likely to involve multiple actors with diverse interests, including those driven primarily by commercial use of resources,” he reported this month in a statement. Indian space agency statement.
But in addition to its resources, there are also those who see the Moon as an intermediate step in which to resupply the probes, on their way to other places in space, such as the planet Mars.
A jump to other planets
The United States space agency (NASA), in collaboration with Canada, the European Union and other countries, plans for 2024 the second mission of its Artemis program to return to the Moon with which they intend to collect information and establish a base camp from the to tackle missions to Mars and beyond in deep space.
The American astronauts Reid Wiserman, Victor Glover and Christina Hammock Koch, plus the Canadian Jeremy Hansen, will orbit the Moon to see from the Orion capsule a little-known area of the satellite, the southern poles, where it was discovered that there is water, something vital for face to a future colonization.
Subsequently, NASA plans a new mission in 2025, Artemis 3, which will mark the return of humans to the lunar surface more than 50 years after the Apollo-17 astronauts were the last to leave the satellite on board the ship. space in 1972.
China announced last spring that the “crewed moon landing phase” of its lunar exploration program has already begun, a goal that it expects to achieve before 2030 and that would make the Asian giant the second country to achieve it after US astronauts stepped on the satellite for the first time in 1969.
China, which is barred from accessing some US-led international initiatives such as the International Space Station due to military ties to its space program, also plans to build a scientific exploration base at the satellite’s south pole over the next decade. project for which it will collaborate with the Russian space agency.
The future lunar station, scheduled to be operational in 2035, is expected to carry out explorations to learn more about stellar formation and activity and to answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, according to those responsible for the project.
challenges ahead
The increase in traffic to the Moon, especially of ships destined to remain in its orbit for several years, poses various challenges for scientists from different space agencies.
The Indian agency recently warned of the need for its experts to carry out maneuvers “to avoid collisions” due to the overlapping of the orbits of two different probes.
A risk that gives rise to “effective coordination between agencies to avoid critical conjunctions in lunar orbit”, and that requires numerous analyzes each time the approach or attempted lunar landing of a new mission is known.
Added to this is the complexity of landing maneuvers, which continues to cause mission accidents and the consequent loss of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This happened last April, when the Japanese aerospace firm Ispace tried unsuccessfully to become the first private mission to land on the rugged lunar surface, after the technicians lost contact with the spacecraft moments before reaching their destination and were unable to reset it.
India also suffered a similar bump in 2019, when its Chandrayaan-2 mission, predecessor of the current probe, also ended up crashing into the Moon due to technical problems during the moon landing stage, postponing the Asian nation’s dreams of coming until this year. finally to the terrestrial satellite.
