Space travel: What’s next for the moon?
Finally back to the moon. At least that’s the hope. It’s been more than 50 years since humans last stepped onto the surface of the Earth’s satellite, but starting this decade, a range of missions by private companies and national space agencies are set to take us there again – from small robotic probes to full-fledged landers , which can also be manned. The ultimate goal? Humans are said to live and work on the moon and then later use it as a way station for possible future missions into deep space.
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Robotic missions come out on top
More than a dozen robotic vehicles are expected to land on the moon in the 2020s. Already on July 14, India launched its Chandrayaan-3 mission, the country’s second attempt to get to the lunar surface after Chandrayaan-2 crashed in 2019. The landing attempt will take place in August.
Hot on the heels of the Indians are two private companies from the US, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, both partly funded by NASA and planning to begin moon landings later this year. Astrobotic’s Peregrine One lander could bring a suite of instruments (partly from NASA) to the moon’s northern hemisphere to study the surface as late as 2023. There is also a sensor to search for water ice and a small rover for further exploration.
At the same time, Intuitive Machines’ Nova C lander is to make its first attempts on the moon. “Our main goal is to land gently on the moon’s south polar region, which has never been done before,” said Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, after NASA recently asked the company to change the originally planned landing site. The mission will include a telescope designed to image the center of the Milky Way from the moon – another first. In addition, one wants to test how data centers on the moon could work. Launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is tentatively scheduled for September.
Both companies have even bigger ambitions. Astrobotic hopes to send a NASA rover called VIPER into some of the moon’s perpetually shadowed craters in 2024 to search for water ice. Intuitive Machines’ second mission will use a small hopper that jumps into one of these inky black craters, bringing with it a drill from NASA.
money for the moon
“Everyone is excited,” says Xavier Orr, head of the Australian company Advanced Navigation, which is to deliver the landing navigation system for Nova-C and later the hopper. The craters, he adds, are considered “the most likely places to find ice on the moon.”
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Funding remains a problem. The private companies are mostly backed by millions of dollars in government money, fueled by NASA’s desire to bring humans back to the moon as part of its Artemis program in the foreseeable future. The US government wants to spur commercial activity on the moon in the same way it has funded commercial activity in orbiting rocketry — the most successful example being Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“The goal is to go back to the moon, build some kind of economy on the moon, and then continue exploring Mars,” said Nujoud Merancy, head of NASA’s Exploration Mission Planning Office at Johnson Space Center in Texas. The ultimate plan, according to Merancy, is to promote a “permanent settlement on the moon.”
Not all observers are convinced that this will work – especially when it comes to the question of how companies with lunar missions can make money outside of NASA funding. “What will be the GDP of such lunar activity?” asks Sinead O’Sullivan, formerly a senior researcher at Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. “Theoretically, a private sector could develop there, but whether that will happen is difficult to say.”
The people are coming back too
Then, if all goes according to plan, in November 2024, the Artemis II mission will send a crew of four astronauts – three American and one Canadian – on a ten-day mission to the moon aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched by the powerful new Space Launch System rocket (SLS) is carried – but without landing. No human has gone to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. However, the goal is “not just a return, but a longer stay and exploration [des Erdtrabanten]”, says Merancy. Artemis II will ensure that the spacecraft are ready for future missions of longer duration.
Also in November 2024, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to launch the first modules for a new NASA space station near the Moon, dubbed Lunar Gateway. The Lunar Gateway is intended to support the Artemis missions to the moon, although the exact relationship between the projects is still unclear. The first humans could then land back on the moon in 2025 aboard a SpaceX spacecraft as part of Artemis III. Much work remains to be done, however, not least proving that the Starship can be launched from Earth and refueled in space. So there was a botched test flight last April.
This leaves some experts questioning the time frame. 2025 is too early. “A landing in 2029 would be optimistic,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, NASA has tasked both SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ rival company Blue Origin with a possible landing at the moon’s south pole to look for water ice that can be used both as drinking water and as rocket fuel, leaving the moon could become a launchpad for missions to more distant targets in the solar system, particularly Mars. But the goal is “not just Mars,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. “It’s about learning how to live and work in deep space – and create a permanent presence beyond Earth orbit.”
New moon laws required
International laws would also need to be updated to reflect the upsurge in lunar activity. At present, such projects are largely governed by the Outer Space Treaty, signed back in 1967, but many of the details contained therein are vague. “We’re getting into areas like private space platforms and lunar mining facilities that don’t have a clear government precedent,” said Scott Pace, a space policy expert at George Washington University and former executive secretary of the US National Space Council. “We must develop responsibilities for activities in space.”
Chris Johnson, an advisor on space law at the US Secure World Foundation, expects the United Nations to bring some of the problems to the table and resolve them over the next five years. “We will need new norms for radio quiet zones, moon roads between valleys and craters and landing sites on the moon,” he says. And if an emergency involving astronauts from different countries occurs on the moon, “everyone must be allowed to seek shelter in the nearest shelter, whether it’s their own or another country’s,” he says.
NASA has already taken initial steps in this direction by getting other countries to sign their own Artemis Accord, a set of guidelines for lunar activities. However, they are not legally binding. “It just set out a set of principles,” says Johnson.
While these discussions are ongoing, there could be numerous other lunar missions that could usher in a new era of space travel. “With the International Space Station, we learned how to live and work in low Earth orbit,” says curator Muir-Harmony. “Now we have the opportunity to learn how to do that on another celestial body and then travel to Mars — and maybe other places in space.”
(jl)
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