We are going back to the moon. And back. And back. And again.
It’s been more than 50 years since humans last walked the lunar surface, but starting this year, a series of missions from private companies and government space agencies plan to take us back, sending everything from tiny robotic probes to full human landings.
The ultimate goal? Getting humans to live and work on the Moon and then using it as a way station for possible later missions into space.
See what’s to come for the Moon.
Robotic missions are leading the charge
More than a dozen robotic vehicles are scheduled to land on the Moon in the 2020s.
On July 14, India launched its Chandrayaan-3 mission, the country’s second attempt to land on the Moon’s surface after Chandrayaan-2 crashed there in 2019. That landing attempt will take place in August.
Close behind are two private US companies, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, both partially funded by NASA to begin moon landings this year. Astrobotic’s Peregrine One lander is scheduled to fly a suite of instruments (some from NASA) to the moon’s northern hemisphere later this year to study the surface, including a sensor to look for water ice and a small rover to explore. . And Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander will attempt to make the first lunar trip.
“Our main goal is to land softly in the south pole region of the moon, which has never been done before,” Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, recently said after NASA asked the company to change the originally planned landing site. The mission will include a telescope to image the center of the Milky Way from the moon, another first, and some demonstration lunar data centers. Launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is tentatively scheduled for September.
Both companies have bigger ambitions. In 2024, Astrobotic hopes to send a NASA rover called VIPER to enter some of the moon’s permanently shadowed craters and look for water ice. The second Intuitive Machines mission, meanwhile, will deploy a small jump vehicle that will jump into one of these pitch-black craters and carry a drill for NASA.
“There’s a lot of hype around this,” says Xavier Orr, CEO of Australian company Advanced Navigation, which will provide the landing navigation system for Nova-C and the funnel. He adds that craters are considered “the most likely places to find ice on the Moon”.
These private companies are backed by millions of dollars in government money, driven by NASA’s desire to get humans back to the Moon as part of its Artemis program. NASA wants to expand commercial activity on the Moon in the same way it has helped fund commercial activity in Earth orbit with companies like SpaceX.
“The goal is to go back to the moon, open a lunar economy and continue exploring Mars,” says Nujoud Merancy, head of NASA’s Exploration Mission Planning Office at the Johnson Space Center in Texas. The ultimate plan, says Merancy, is to promote a “permanent settlement on the Moon”.
Not everyone is convinced, especially when it comes to how companies will make money from moon missions outside of NASA funding. “What is the GDP of lunar activities?” says Sinead O’Sullivan, a former senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard Business School. “Some commercial economics may evolve, but it’s hard to say.”
Humans will also return
In November 2024, if all goes according to plan, the Artemis II mission will send a crew of four astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — to the Moon on a 10-day mission on NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched by the powerful new Space rocket. Agency Launch System.
Humans haven’t traveled to the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. The goal, however, “is not just to return, but to stay and explore,” says Merancy. Artemis II “is really ensuring that the vehicles are ready for longer duration missions in the future”.
Also in November 2024, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled to carry the first modules of NASA’s new space station near the Moon called Lunar Gateway. The Gateway is intended to support Artemis missions to the Moon, although the exact relationship is still a bit unclear. The first humans on the Moon are expected to land in 2025 aboard a SpaceX Starship vehicle as part of Artemis III.
However, there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly to prove that Starship can launch from Earth (after a failed test flight in April 2023) and be refueled in space. That leaves some doubtful about the 2025 timeframe. “A 2029 landing would be really optimistic,” says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts.
NASA, for its part, has hired SpaceX and, more recently, Jeff Bezos’ competitor Blue Origin, for its planned south pole landings of the moon to prospect for water ice, which can be used as drinking water and perhaps as fuel. rocket, so that the moon can become a stopping point for missions to more distant destinations in the solar system, such as Mars.
But the goal “isn’t just Mars,” says Teasel Muir-Harmony, curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. “It’s learning how to live and work in space and create a sustainable presence beyond Earth’s orbit.”
Lunar laws need updating
International laws will need to be updated to deal with this increase in lunar activity. At present, these activities are largely governed by the Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967, but many of its details are vague.
“We’re getting into areas like private space platforms and lunar mining facilities, for which there really isn’t a clear government precedent,” says Scott Pace, a space policy expert at George Washington University and former executive secretary of the US National Space Council. . “We have to be responsible for activities in space.”
Chris Johnson, space law consultant for the Secure World Foundation in the US, expects to see discussions at the United Nations over the next five years or so to resolve some of the issues. “We’re going to need standards for radio silence zones, lunar roads between valleys and craters, and moon landing strips,” he says. Or, perhaps, if emergencies occur with astronauts from different countries on the Moon, “everyone will have to take shelter in the nearest shelter, whether it’s their own or someone else’s,” he says.
NASA has begun to take tentative steps toward that goal by having countries sign their Artemis Accords, a set of guidelines on lunar activity. But they are not legally binding. “We only have one set of principles,” says Johnson.
Lunar missions could come up quickly while these discussions are going on, which could usher in a new dawn of space travel. “With the International Space Station, we learned to live and work in low Earth orbit,” says Muir-Harmony. “Now we have the opportunity to learn how to do this on another celestial body and then travel to Mars — and perhaps other locations.”
