The Moon will be one of the most popular destinations in the Solar System in the next year. No fewer than seven missions are headed there from India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, along with several companies.
NASA’s US$93-billion Artemis programe might be stealing most of the limelight with its maiden launch this year because it’s the first step towards sending astronauts to the Moon. But the United States is just one of many nations and private companies that soon plan to launch missions, heralding what scientists say could be a new golden age of lunar exploration.
Science isn’t the only driving force. The flurry of missions also signals the growing ambition of several nations and commercial players to show off their technological prowess and make their mark, particularly now that getting to the Moon is easier and cheaper than ever before.
South Korea’s Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), for example, “is the first step to secure and verify Korea’s space exploration capability and obtain new scientific measurements of the Moon”, says Chae Kyung Sim, a planetary scientist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in Daejeon, South Korea, who is a member of the science team designing one of the mission’s instruments. “We are enjoying joining this new wave of lunar missions.”
Four other nations are also aiming to reach the Moon in 2022. Japan’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon), which is likely to launch sometime later this year, will attempt a pinpoint landing, with a level of accuracy no other country has ever achieved. That mission or one by the Tokyo-based company ispace, also set to launch this year, will be the country’s first foray to the Moon.
India’s Chandrayaan-3, currently officially slated for an August launch that might get delayed, will be the nation’s second attempt to get a lander and rover onto the lunar surface, after the failure of India’s previous lunar lander mission.
Russia’s Luna-25 lander, scheduled for a July launch to the south polar region, will be the nation’s first trip to the surface of the Moon since the Soviet Union’s previous lunar lander mission in 1976. And the United Arab Emirates is embarking on its first lunar mission with a rover called Rashid, scheduled to launch later this year. That flight will potentially mark another first — as the pioneering trip to the Moon by a commercial mission. Rashid will be carried to the surface on a lander developed by ispace that will be riding into lunar orbit on a rocket designed by SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. Other companies are also heading to the Moon as part of a NASA programme, marking the beginning of commercial trips to other worlds.
Some of the national space agencies running these expeditions are providing only scant details about the missions and when they will launch, with schedules changing frequently. Scientist also say that the war in Ukraine is very likely to delay Russia’s mission — and could have unexpected effects on other ones, too.
Whenever they launch, the missions aim to provide streams of data about the Moon — only a tiny fraction of which has been explored so far. Scientists also say this flurry of activity is likely to spur more-frequent and cheaper access to the Moon and increase international interest in lunar research. It could also lay the foundation for crewed lunar outposts, which could provide a launching post for travel to Mars.
It is very exciting and “hugely important to have so many nations involved in this armada of spacecraft going to the Moon”, says James Head, a planetary geologist at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, who was involved in training NASA’s Apollo astronauts in the 1970s. “There are so many unresolved questions that can be addressed with a host of different robotic and human capabilities.”
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