This year will see a slew of missions to the moon after 2021 has not had a single lunar mission.
This year will see a slew of missions to the moon after 2021 has not had a single lunar mission.
United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) It will begin the Artemis project and is supporting a number of missions to send equipment and supplies to the moon. for future use by astronauts
India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Both have missions to the moon this year as well. There are also a number of companies that will have missions to the moon this year.
These missions are all going to space without humans. And most will lay the groundwork for sending humans to the moon in less than a decade.
But that’s not the ultimate goal. Setting up a space station on the moon is just one step in the path of a manned mission to Mars.
Dr. Zoe Leonardt, astrophysicist From the University of Bristol believes that this year will see the start of a new international space race.
Although these missions are aimed at exploring the moon. But some missions have even more ambitious goals.
Dr. Lenardt said Some missions are long-term missions. with goals beyond that And the voyage to the moon is both a proof of concept and an opportunity to test new technologies and to collaborate.
What is each mission about? and what is the goal This is an upcoming mission to the moon this year.
Mission Artemis-1 (Artemis-1) and Capstone (Capstone)
NASA’s Artemis space program The goal is to send humans back to the moon by 2025.
This March, Mission Artemis-1 will begin to prepare to lay the groundwork for that challenging goal.
This quest will not be accompanied by human beings. Only the “Moonikin” dummy sits in the commander’s seat of Artemis 1. This is a real-life mockup named after Arturo Campos, who played a key role. to bring the Apollo 13 spacecraft safely back to Earth
The campos role will be to test the same spacesuits that astronauts aboard Artemis will use during missions.
NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) system which uses the most powerful rocket in the world will send the Orion spacecraft up to orbit the moon to test the safety of the spacecraft that the crew will go up
NASA will study in detail the Orion spacecraft’s heat shield. During the return to Earth at high speed This will cause a high temperature of nearly 2,760 degrees Celsius.
This year will be the year that the Artemis project has taken another step forward.
Getty Images Orion spacecraft It’s the first step of NASA’s moon Artemis mission.
Capstone stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, which refers to space exploration and automatic positioning technology operations between the Earth and the Moon. It was a pioneering mission for the Artemis project.
NASA will launch a satellite the size of a microwave oven Also known as the CubeStat, Capstone’s spacecraft was also in March to test its orbit around the moon. the rotation of the moon as the moon orbits the earth
The objective of this mission is ensuring that Astronauts will be safe in future travel.
“The ultimate goal is Mars.”
The data obtained from this test will help create an operating model for another key component of the Artemis project, the Gateway.
NASA calls this “Multipurpose outpost orbiting the moon. which is an important contributor to the long-term return of humans to the lunar surface.”
If all goes according to plan, in 2025 the Artemis-3 mission It will be the first human landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The mission will also send the first female and first black astronauts to the moon.
Dr. Hannah Sarjeant, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida. noted that This focus on the moon It’s part of a bigger vision. with the intention of making the Gateway a station for deep space exploration.
“A robot mission to the moon It was one of the first steps in this plan. leading to the establishment of a space station on the moon base on the moon and a mission to eventually send people to Mars,” she said.
Missions of India, Japan and the United Arab Emirates
Many nations and companies are paying attention to the moon this year.
Some will do research. and many will send up supplies and equipment.
Two years after a failed moon mission Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is planning a lunar exploration mission dubbed “Chandrayan-3” India will send this spacecraft, which will transport a rover that will travel on the surface of the moon. and lander to stay stationary During the third quarter of 2022
Japan has two challenging lunar projects this year.
The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) plans to launch a lander, a spacecraft that lands on the moon. Landing on the moon April 2022, dubbed SLIM (short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon), it will demonstrate precise lunar landing techniques. and will recognize the crater on the moon using facial recognition technology. The space telescope XRISM (short for X-Ray Imagining and Spectroscopy Mission) will also be launched with the spacecraft.
Japanese aerospace company ispace will send a lander to the moon in the second half of 2022. Mission 1 is part of “Hakuto-R” (Hakuto-R), a commercial lunar exploration project of JAXA, will also send two or more rover robots.
One of them, built by JAXA, is a tiny two-wheeled rover that will explore the lunar surface. Another robot rover that the Japanese company will send from the United Arab Emirates is called Rashid, a four-wheeled vehicle that is responsible for testing the moon’s soil.
Russia’s Luna 25 (Luna 25) mission and the South Korean moon landing.
Getty Images Luna 25 (Luna 25) Russian moon lander. will land at the south pole of the moon
Russia’s 2022 lunar mission will be called Luna 25.
It will be Russia’s first lunar lander in 45 years and the first to land on the moon’s south pole. This is the area where NASA is considering sending people to the moon.
The Russian space agency is scheduled to carry out the mission in July 2022.
The Korea Aerospace Research Institute, the South Korean space agency, will send the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) to the moon one month later, in August 2022.
KPLO will study the lunar surface and help plan future missions to the lunar poles.
NASA commercial robots
Many private companies also plan to travel to the moon.
in a NASA project called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Companies will compete to provide transportation to the surface of the moon.
Intuitive Machines is based in Houston. It aims to use a six-legged lunar robot, Nova-C, to carry payloads to the lunar surface in early 2022.
The next mission belongs to the Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic Technology Company. Set to take place in mid-2022, the company’s Peregrine Mission 1 will carry science research equipment with a four-legged, box-shaped lander.
What are the goals of these missions?
Dr. Sarjeant said Many of these missions aim to explore the lunar environment. Its aim is to find a way to protect crew and equipment from dangerous elements like lunar dust and intense solar wind.
These missions will allow scientists to test prototype devices and conduct experiments they may use to create resources like water.
“We want to ensure that These machines work before we send our crew up there. “These supplies may ultimately be used to produce the fuel needed to continue our mission to Mars.”
“The moon also functions as a test equipment for the technologies we would like to one day use on Mars. It’s closer to our world. It took only three days to travel instead of the minimum 6 months to get to Mars.”
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