Half a century after the first manned landing on the Moon, the Earth satellite is again exciting the minds of space agencies. Trump wants to send Americans there, while India and China are planning robotic missions.
We will return to the moon. At least a certain Donald Trump promises it. For example, in a decree signed on December 11, 2017, the US President, with just a couple of words, returned to the Earth satellite a key place in his country's space policy: “The United States will lead the return of people to the Moon for research and long-term development. This will be followed by habitable missions to Mars and other destinations,”an unexpected decision. According to Francis Rocard, a space industry expert in charge of solar system exploration programs at the National Space Research Center, "Donald Trump took everyone by surprise, including NASA, which is now starting to wiggle its brains …"
This is not the first time the American space agency has had to deal with an abrupt change in course. In 2004, Bush Jr. launched the Constellation program, which was supposed to send people to the moon. Six years later, his successor, Barack Obama, canceled the project because it was seriously behind schedule and under budget. This was replaced by the idea of sending a crew to an asteroid with a distant prospect of a flight to Mars. Today, Donald Trump (perhaps the reason for this is his obsessive desire to destroy everything created by his predecessor) again heads to the moon and returns to the plan of George W. Bush.
“Everyone laughs at 90% of Trump's decisions. And this, then, must be taken seriously, since we are talking about the Moon? - notes another expert.
Be that as it may, the US President's directive is drawing even more attention to the Moon, almost half a century after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first took to the moon in July 1969. A little more, because 2018 was supposed to pass under the sign of the Moon anyway. The fact is that India and China decided, each for their part, to send a small rover to its surface. For India, this will be the first step of its kind (the Chandrayan-2 mission), while China has already successfully sent the Chang'e-3 robot to the lunar surface in 2013. Now Beijing has planned a very interesting mission, since the Chang'e-4 rover will have to ride on the dark side of the satellite, which no one has ever been able to do.
The Google Lunar Ex Prize project, which the Ex Prize Foundation launched in 2007 under the patronage of Google, could increase the number of projects aimed at the moon in 2018. The $ 30 million competition was supposed to spur privately funded teams of experts to send rovers to the moon that could travel 500 meters and send photos and videos to earth. About three dozen projects were developed, of which five finalists were selected.
Unfortunately, as X Prize officials reported on January 23, none of them will be able to land on the moon until March 31st … European Space Agency astrophysicist Bernard Foing still hopes that at least some of the these missions. According to him, even if no one is awarded the prize, it can still be considered "a success, since it has inspired dozens of teams."
Bernard Fouant is Executive Director of the International Working Group on the Exploration of the Moon. The former scientific director of work on the European lunar probe Smart-1 (from 2003 to 2006) speaks with undisguised enthusiasm about the study of our satellite and lists the missions aimed at it in the future: “In 2019, the Chinese mission Chang'e-5 may be launched ", Which involves the delivery of samples to Earth. By 2020, the American rover "Resource Prospector" may be ready, which has somewhat receded into the background. Then, in 2021, a Japanese SLIM, a precision lander is slated to land at the entrance to the lava tube. Russia has missions Luna-25, Luna-26 and Luna-27, whose names resemble the Soviet lunar program … Luna-25 is a descent module, Luna-26 is an orbital system,and Luna-27 is another descent module to reach the surface in the polar region containing ice. ESA will provide him with a meter for sampling at 1 meter depth and an instrument for ice analysis, and will also participate in the creation of a communication system and precise landing."
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Looking for ice
To all this should be added a scattering of CubSets, that is, nanosatellites weighing only a few kilograms, the basic unit of which is a cube of 10 centimeters in diameter. In this area, ESA has announced two missions. The first will analyze the crater at the south pole of the Moon in search of ice that could become a source of water for future colonists. The second will take over the search for traces of meteorite impacts on the dark side of the satellite. The Americans call CubSets projects Lunar IceCube, LunaH-Map and Lunar FlashLight. They, too, will look for traces of precious ice.
All three of these projects are to be aboard NASA's new Space Launch System during its first launch in 2019. Let this often be forgotten, after the shuttles were retired in 2011 (they required too many resources and claimed 14 human lives), the United States has to deal with a humiliating inability to send a man into space. So they are forced to rely on Russian rockets to fly to the ISS. The new carrier should fix this gap: it will be equipped with the Orion habitable capsule. During the first launch in 2019, it will be empty, even if the impatient Donald Trump at one time demanded to send a crew in it. The second launch is scheduled for the early 2020s, but the crew will not go to the moon, but will only fly around it in a kind of remake of the 1968 Apollo 8 mission.
The real return of man to the moon is worth waiting for later: even if it looks unlikely, half a century after the Apollo program, in the age of artificial intelligence and digital technologies, we are unable to send a man to our satellite.
The first reason is financial. As Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of the French National Center for Space Research (NCSP), rightly pointed out, there are "no budgets" for this. While the Chinese have big plans for the moon, “times have changed: the US and China now do not have the same rivalry that the US and the USSR did in the 1960s. In the Apollo program, an entire country worked for ten years to send a man to the moon using the Saturn V rocket. This huge launch vehicle, retired in 1973, has no modern counterpart, even if the Space Launch System and the Falcon Heavy (first flew on February 6) are intended to change the balance.
The second obstacle concerns the technical side of the issue: there is no rocket, no ship (the Orion capsule flew only once in 2014 without a crew), no lunar module. In addition, no one is going to expose people to the same risk now as in the Apollo program. “The safety requirements have become much higher,” explains Jean-Yves Le Gall. “If we return to the moon, it will be in different conditions than in the days of Apollo. No one will allow the existence of single points of failure,”that is, non-duplicated elements, the failure of which could jeopardize the entire mission.
Another threat is associated with a long stay of a person on the lunar surface: we are talking about solar flares with emissions of ionizing particles. Unlike the Earth, the Moon does not have a magnetosphere that can protect against them. So, in August 1972, in a break between the two Apollo missions, the Sun gave vent to "anger", which would certainly have resulted in the death of astronauts if they were on the surface of the Moon at that moment. If colonists appear there one day, they will definitely have to live underground …
Despite all the obstacles and threats, some believe in a "second season" of the conquest of the moon. In 2015, ESA CEO Johann-Dietrich Wörner unveiled a futuristic concept of a lunar village where humans and robots live together. It is also supported by Bernard Fuan, who sees in it an opportunity for broad "peaceful international cooperation, as it was during the construction of the ISS." Lunar Village is more of an idea and philosophy than a specific project. It is aimed at the joint work of space nations, should become a center of trade, industry and mining, promote the development of new technologies (in particular robots working more or less independently), serve as a source of inspiration for new generations and, as Bernard Fouant notes, provide scientists with new fields for research.
Technical problem
Scientists dreamed of the moon as a "playground". Although the Apollo missions brought centners of lunar soil, experts want to clarify many geological aspects, be it the formation of a satellite, the fall of meteorites and comets, seismic activity, the presence of ice in polar craters, etc. In addition, astronomers saw the moon as a great way to get around earthly inconveniences like the atmosphere. However, as Francis Rocard notes, “almost no one else talks about installing telescopes there. On the one hand, we already have space telescopes. On the other hand, there is a serious technical problem with the Moon: the temperature difference between day and night is 300 degrees! This is a real nightmare for engineers. The expansion will be so strong that the devices will crack, the optics will defocus,and the mounting of the mirrors looses … The only area in which the Moon opens an observation window inaccessible from the Earth is radio astronomy."
Briton Joseph Silk, professor of astronomy at Johns Hopkins University (Maryland) and the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, puts it simply: "Installing antennas on the dark side of the moon would provide a unique opportunity for cosmology." The task is to find the traces of the ultra-rapid expansion of the universe after its inception, which remained in the depths of space. To capture these first structures of the universe, you need to "listen" to certain radio waves that do not reach the Earth because of its ionosphere. This explains the desire to go to the moon devoid of the ionosphere, primarily to its dark side, which our own radio waves do not reach. From this point of view, our satellite is the cleanest and quietest place in the solar system.
Interference
According to Joseph Silk, the implementation of his project will require "millions of antennas on an area of about 1,000 square kilometers." In this case, parabolas are out of the question. The British scientist is referring to the most basic antennas, rolled up in rolls, which can be "spread" by rovers like carpets. In addition, a system will be required to combine the signals received from all antennas, as well as a satellite to collect data and transfer them to Earth … Another task of the project is to prevent other objects of the lunar village from interfering with the antenna field. Bernand Fuan and Josef Silk believe lunar installations will require protected areas under a treaty that resembles the Antarctic. There is also the problem of cost. Silk speaks of a "huge budget."At the same time, it should account for no more than 5% of the cost of a lunar village … the amount of which is still unknown.
That is, everything again comes down to money. When launching the Apollo program, Kennedy acted very logically and immediately increased NASA's budget by 89%, and then doubled it a year later. Today, nothing of the kind can be said. Jean-Yves Le Gall has nothing against the futuristic views of his colleague from ESA, but notes that lunar projects require “desperate calmness”: “Some soar in dreams, while others have their feet on the ground and look at budgets. We looked and did not see sufficient budgets for large lunar projects, even from the Chinese. " Jean-Yves Le Gall has high hopes for exploration of Mars with the help of automatic vehicles, for which, by the way, money is allocated: "We are acting in the perspective of the search for extraterrestrial life, which has been one of the main topics for the last 10-15 years." Besides,he adds with a caustic grin, "People are interested in new things." And we have already been on the moon.
Pierre Barthélémy