LUNA TOO

Liquid gold? Why the world’s space leaders are rushing for a foothold at the lunar south pole

Art Raymond
Mon, August 21, 2023 

This NASA image, showing areas of the moon’s south pole that are most likely to hold deposits of water ice, was assembled with data gathered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Water sources are seen as a key element in supporting an ongoing human presence on the moon and could help provide fuel for future space missions launched from the lunar surface. | NASA

In a surge of activity that echoes the multinational race to plant the first flag at the Earth’s south pole around the turn of the 20th century, the world’s leaders in extraterrestrial exploration are now vying to be the first to do the same at the lunar south pole, but this time around are driven by a shared interest in one precious commodity.

Water.

Russia was poised to be the first nation to land a spacecraft near the moon’s south pole on Monday but the state-run space corporation Roscosmos reported its Luna-25 lander ran into trouble and crash-landed on the surface of the moon on Saturday.

India has its own spacecraft in the neighborhood and the Indian Space Research Organization tweeted Sunday that its Chandrayaan-3 lander, which has been in lunar orbit since earlier this month, is scheduled for a landing near the moon’s south pole on Aug. 23.

Chandrayaan-3 Mission :

🇮🇳Chandrayaan-3 is set to land on the moon 🌖on August 23, 2023, around 18:04 Hrs. IST.

Thanks for the wishes and positivity!

Let’s continue experiencing the journey together as the action unfolds LIVE at:
ISRO Website https://t.co/EUxekbHc0g
Facebook…

— LVM3-M4/CHANDRAYAAN-3 MISSION (@chandrayaan_3) August 20, 2023

If India successfully lands the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on Wednesday, it will own the distinction of first to land near the lunar south pole and join an exclusive group of countries that currently includes the U.S., Russia and China as the only nations to land a craft on Earth’s sole satellite.

While the failed Luna-25 and still orbiting Indian spacecraft are both unmanned probes on missions to gather further information on lunar water sources, the U.S has its own plans for deeper exploration of the moon’s south pole. But NASA has a grander vision in place, the multiphase Artemis program, and instead of sending a remote probe, the U.S. space agency has plans underway to send a manned mission to the lunar south pole, which would be the first human return to the surface of the moon since the final Apollo moon visit in December 1972.

Scientists are accumulating mounting evidence that water ice could exist on or near the moon’s surface and believe one of the most likely areas to find it could be in permanently shaded locations near the satellite’s south pole. Water access will be a necessary component in any plans for a long-term human presence on the moon as a life necessity, source of oxygen production, a potential material for shielding against constant radiation bombardment and is a material that can be refined into its base components of oxygen and hydrogen to fuel potential rocket launches from the lunar surface.

While human colonization of the moon may sound more like the plot of a science fiction tale than a workable plan, NASA is aiming for a manned mission to the moon in late 2025 and believes components for a moon base could start ferrying from Earth in the 2030s.

In 2020, NASA unveiled plans to build a single moon base in the south pole region as part of its long-range Artemis program goals but earlier this year offered an update on how that might play out.

At a space symposium in April, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration systems development, Jim Free, said the agency’s Artemis program may ultimately build several bases around the moon instead of a single Artemis Base Camp at the lunar south pole as unveiled in 2020, according to a report from Space.com.

“It’s really hard to say we’re going to have a single base camp,” Free told reporters at the symposium. “Because if we miss a launch window, we might have to wait a month to go back to that place.”

NASA says returning astronauts to the moon and continuing to work toward establishing permanent moon bases will accommodate greatly expanded scientific study of the lunar environment while also laying the groundwork for future deep space exploration missions.

“With Artemis missions, NASA will land the first woman and first person of color on the moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before,” NASA said in a web posting. “We will collaborate with commercial and international partners and establish the first long-term presence on the moon. Then, we will use what we learn on and around the moon to take the next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars.”

Why do all these countries want to go to the moon right now?

Jon Kelvey
Sun, August 20, 2023

NASA concept art of American astronauts on the moon.

On December 6, 1968, Time magazine published an issue with a metaphor illustrated on the cover: a Soviet cosmonaut and an American astronaut were in a sprint to the moon. The actual space race had kicked off a decade earlier, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, in 1957. It ended less than a year after Time published its cover, when US Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon on July 20, 1969. The excitement wore off quickly—the last humans to step foot on the moon, the crew of Apollo 17, did so in 1972. So far, no one has gone back.

But that’s changing. NASA is committed to landing astronauts on the moon again in 2025 as part of the space agency’s Artemis Program. China has plans to land humans on the moon by 2030. In the meantime, robotic missions to the moon are increasing: Russia's endeavor to return to the moon for the first time in 47 years, the robotic Luna-25 mission, crashed this week, and India hopes to make its first soft landing there on August 23 with its Chandrayaan-3 lander.

With so many nations headed for the moon, including an increasingly aggressive if diminished Russia, is the world at the cusp of a second space race?

The temptation to reach for the historical space race as a model is understandable, but as long as we're mapping history onto current events, it may not be the best guide, according to Cathleen Lewis, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museums curator of international space programs. “In my opinion, this isn't a new race,” she says. “If you want to use historical events, this is more of a gold rush.”

Or, more precisely, an ice rush. In 2018, scientists discovered water ice preserved in the deep, permanent shadows of polar craters. The US, China, Russia, and India are targeting portions of the lunar South Pole where that frozen resource should be. Water can be used to create rocket fuel or in lunar manufacturing. But it is heavy, and therefore expensive, to launch from Earth.

Space agencies “haven't quite worked out” how they are going to use this ice, or for “what technology to what end,” Lewis says. “But everyone wants to get there because we now know there is water ice to be found.”

[Related on PopSci+: A DIY-rocket club’s risky dream of launching a human to the edge of space]

But it’s not just about the ice. The technological basis for all of this activity is entirely different than in the mid-20th century, Lewis points out. Back then, the US and the Soviet Union were developing the technology to go to the moon for the very first time.

President Kennedy backed the lunar program because his advisors convinced him the race was technologically winnable, she says. While this competition had a destination, it also referred to the way “the USSR was racing to the maximum capacity of their technological limits.”

The Soviets had difficulty developing vehicles powerful enough to launch a crewed mission to the moon. The US created the Saturn V rocket, a singularly capable technology that was the most powerful ever launched until the first flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket in late 2022.

Today, multiple nations and even private companies have the technological capability to send spacecraft to the moon. Space itself is now more crowded, too, host to satellites tied into terrestrial economies: carrying communications, providing guidance signals, and observing agricultural water and other resources on the ground.

The goal is no longer to achieve technological superiority. Instead, nations are rushing to acquire existing technologies that are becoming a prerequisite for economic independence and affluence. “This is part of being in a world in a mature space age, that these are no longer optional programs, they're no longer pickup games, jockeying to see who's first,” Lewis says. “These are essential, existential programs for 21st century existence.”

[Related: China’s astronauts embark on a direct trip to their brand new space station]

In this sense, the current wave of moon programs are different from those in the past because they are more internally focused on economies, rather than serving as a non-military proxy contest between two superpowers. China, Lewis notes, has scaled its exploration of space to match its economic development over the past 30 years.

However, that’s not to say it will remain that way. The historical Gold Rush, after all, led to conflict over that valuable resource. Once enough players are regularly operating on the moon with regularity, the opportunities for disputes will increase.

“Who gets to choose what we do with the moon?” Lewis asks. “We haven’t sorted out issues about who has mining and drilling rights.”

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids nations from making territorial claims on celestial bodies, but permits using resources there. Whether that use includes mining materials to sell for a profit on Earth is less clear. “We haven't had to deal with that profit in space,” Lewis says. ”I'm glad I'm not an attorney who specializes in these sorts of things because it's a part of it that makes my head ache.”

But there may be plenty of time for space lawyers and diplomats to figure that out. Because, when it comes to the moon, even gold rushes move slowly. “We've seen missions fail,” Lewis says, such as India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission that crashed on the moon in 2019. “The moon is a lot easier than it was 60 years ago, but it's still difficult to get there.”