Mankind’s race to Moon- again!
By: Ishani Srivastava
Tags: Astronomy, Moon Landing, Science, Space, Space Exploration

Mankind’s race to Moon- again!

A poster made by ATOTMYR (Sahil)

The start of this decade with a lunar eclipse on January 10, 2020, evoked memories of bravery and courage in humankind’s race to land first on our closest astronomical neighbor. And rightly so, since we just celebrated the golden jubilee of Apollo 11’s success last year. But even though science and technology have developed in leaps and bounds empowering us with the knowledge of many other moons in the vast Universe, something seems to have brought us all back to our own Moon (more than gravity, of course, :p). This decade is all set, with the world’s eyes on the Moon, evident by numerous missions around the world to search for water, minerals or something more. Interested to know more about these exciting ventures? Then, fasten your seat belts and start this journey!

Chandrayaan — 3

India had launched Chandrayaan-2, last September in the high hopes of becoming the fourth country to perform soft-landing of a rover on the lunar surface. Although the orbiter is working correctly, the unfortunate crash landing of Vikram on the lunar surface did devastate many of the astronomy enthusiasts. But ISRO is back to prove its indigenous capability with Chandrayaan-3, which was officially announced on January 1 this year. The mission, slated to launch in 2021, will consist of a stationary lander and a rover as it will coordinate with the orbiter of Chandrayaan-2. While we keep our fingers crossed for this one, here’s a picture of the beautiful Moon craters captured by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter!

Picture Courtesy- ISRO

Artemis

NASA has come up with a new space program called Artemis, in collaboration with commercial companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, etcetera, and many international partners like ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The program is a crewed spaceflight program to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024.

Although this has just been viewed as a step towards achieving the long-term goal of sending humans to Mars, NASA seems to be ready to learn everything from scratch for this mission. From the Space Launch System as the biggest rocket of all time and a new spacecraft Orion to two novel spacesuits: the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU), and the Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS), and the Lunar Gateway to serve as a space station to be deployed in lunar orbit, this highly ambitious mission has been in development since 2011. The program has already started with the successful launch of Artemis 1 this week, and we hope this program turns out to be as historic as its twin brother, Apollo.

To read more about it, click here — NASA!

Picture Courtesy: NASA (Check out their fantastic website for the latest updates on Artemis! )

Luna-Glob

With NASA’s missions to the Moon, there is no way Roscosmos can be behind, mainly because it will be the first time that cosmonauts will land on the lunar surface. The Luna-Glob program is aimed at achieving precisely that, with its goal of creating a fully robotic lunar base so that it can start with crewed lunar missions in the orbiter spacecraft Orel. European technology, science, and infrastructure will also be part of this adventure as a result of the collaboration between Roscosmos and ESA for Luna missions. While the mission had been delayed several times due to the financial crisis, the mission is back on track again with Luna 25 scheduled to launch in 2021 to land on Moon’s South Pole, and Luna 29 having a rover with the capability of bringing back samples from the Moon to Earth. While the crewed lunar missions are only planned for the early 2030s after the robotic phase is completed, we cannot wait to see cosmonauts too getting down on the Moon!

Model for Luna 25. Picture Courtesy: Sputnik News

Chang’e

Operational since 2007, China’s Lunar Exploration Project is divided into four main phases: Orbital Missions, Soft Landers, Sample Return and a Lunar Research Station. The first two phases have already been completed successfully. Chang’e 4 has enthralled us last year by its successful landing on the far side of the Moon and the first sprouting ever of cotton seeds in an experiment on its lander. But there’s a lot more to come! While Chang’e and Chang’4 are planned to bring back samples of Moon to Earth, Chang’e 7’s objective is to detect water ice in permanently shadowed regions and determine its origin while Chang’e 8 will be designed to test technologies necessary to the construction of a lunar science base. This mission has been very promising so far, and we hope it amazes us with even more surprises in this decade.