Something of a new lunar race is underway, but the motivations differ from what put men on its surface 50 years ago.Everyone, it seems, wants to go the moon now.In January, Chang’e-4, a Chinese robotic spacecraft including a small rover, became the first ever to land on the far side of the moon. India is aiming to launch Chandrayaan-2 this month, its first attempt to reach the lunar surface. Even a small Israeli nonprofit, SpaceIL, tried to send a small robotic lander there this year, but it crashed.
In the coming decades, boots worn by visitors from these and other nations could add their prints to the lunar dust. China is taking a slow and steady approach, and foresees its astronauts’ first arrival about a quarter of a century in the future. The European Space Agency has put out a concept of an international “moon village” envisioned for sometime around 2050. Russia has also described plans for sending astronauts to the moon by 2030, at last, although many doubt it can afford the cost.
In the United States, which sent 24 astronauts toward the moon from 1968 to 1972, priorities shift with the whims of Congress and presidents. But NASA in February was suddenly pushed to pick up its pace when Vice President Mike Pence announced the goal of putting Americans on the moon again by 2024, four years ahead of the previous schedule.
“NASA is highly motivated,” Jim Bridenstine, the former Oklahoma congressman and Navy pilot picked by President Trump to be the agency’s administrator, said in an interview. “We now have a very clear direction.”
For India, reaching the moon would highlight its technological advances. China would establish itself as a world power off planet. For the United States and NASA, the moon is now an obvious stop along the way to Mars.
The fascination with Earth’s celestial companion is not limited to nation-states. A bevy of companies has lined up in hopes of winning NASA contracts to deliver experiments and instruments to the moon. Blue Origin, the rocket company started by Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, is developing a large lander that it hopes to sell to NASA for taking cargo — and astronauts — to the moon’s surface.
For three decades after the end of the Apollo program, few thought much about the moon. The United States had beaten the Soviet Union in the moon race. After Apollo 17, the last visit by NASA astronauts in 1972, the Soviets sent a few more robotic spacecraft to the moon, but they soon also lost interest in further exploration there.
NASA in those years turned its attention to building space shuttles and then the International Space Station. Its robotic explorers headed farther out, exploring Mars more intensely, as well as the asteroid belt and the solar system’s outer worlds.
Mr. Bridenstine says one of the main reasons for accelerating a return to the moon now is to reduce the chances of politicians changing their minds again. A 2024 landing would occur near the end of the second term of Mr. Trump’s presidency, if he wins re-election next year.
“I think it’s sad that we have not been back to the moon since 1972,” Mr. Bridenstine said. “There have been efforts in the past. They’ve never materialized.”
NASA has named the new moon program Artemis, after Apollo’s sister in Greek mythology. Its first mission would be a crewless test of the Space Launch System, a big rocket already in development. It is scheduled for late 2020, although many expect the launch to slip to 2021.
The second flight — the first with astronauts aboard — would zip around the moon, but not land, in 2022.
On the third flight, in 2024, astronauts would first travel to Gateway, an outpost in orbit around the moon, and from there take another spacecraft to the lunar surface, somewhere near its South Pole.
Mr. Bridenstine, echoed by other NASA officials, has repeatedly said that Artemis would take the “first woman and the next man” to the moon.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/science/nasa-moon-apollo-artemis.html
