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The New Moon

 

     As the world economic competition intensifies in relation to new space projects, so does the desire of different nations for further exploration of the Moon. With the news popping up recently from various parts of the world about plans for coming lunar missions, NASA should be preparing for a serious international competition to its scientific and utilitarian projects connected with the Moon. Even some privately owned organizations, such as Google, are airing their plans to take part in the lunar race.

     On September 13, Google together with X Prize Foundation, has announced that it is financing a $30 million Moon project, namely, a race for lunar rovers that will be privately funded). The Google Lunar X PRIZE, the richest contest for innovations in the fields of space technologies, aims to establish a global private lunar race for facilitating space exploration and benefiting the entire humanity. The main emphasis of this project is a bigger public involvement into further missions to the Moon.

     The contest calls upon private teams from any country to participate with their automatically-operating lunar rovers, which would be able to work on the surface of the Moon, travel around, and transmit various data and video images back to Earth. The first team that succeeds before the end of 2014 will be rewarded with a $20 million prize. Also, substantial monetary prizes are reserved for other lucky teams, as well as for bonus tasks, such as travelling longer distances or finding traces of water on the lunar surface. All images and data received from those private lunar missions, will be published for everybody to see, explore, and comment at the Google Lunar X Prize's Web site.

     This idea is not new. Plans to launch private space flights and expeditions to land onto the Moon have been around since the end of the 1990s. Among private investors working on such lunar missions, we can mention those hosted by BlastOff.com and LunaCorp. Unfortunately, none of those ides have been fulfilled. In the past few years, the Ansari X Prize, the DARPA Grand Challenge, and the Centennial Challenges program (the latter funded by NASA) have also been announced. In 2004, "America's Space Prize" in the amount of $50 million was offered by tycoon Robert Bigelow from Nevada to those who will launch the first privately-financed flight around the Earth before the year 2010.

     Creators of the new Google project say that their plans do not come in conflict with those of NASA. As is known, NASA is preparing to launch next year an orbiter to spin around the Moon and, by the year 2018, is planning to send to the Moon robotic missions with subsequent manned landing. The estimated price of NASA return to the Moon will be about $104 billion, which is roughly half of what was spent on the Apollo program. The new manned lunar mission will include a crew up to four astronauts equipped with an improved version of an Apollo-like moon rover, called CEV (the Crew Exploration Vehicle). It is planned that the astronauts will spend seven days on the surface of the Moon. At the meanwhile, the space shuttle program of NASA is scheduled to end in 2010. The first launch of CEV in 2012 with lunar landing in 2018 will be in complete sync with the President Bush space vision to return to the Moon by the year 2020.

     NASA's new plans for lunar exploration require the development of a capsule with the diameter of 5.5 meters to host up to six astronauts. The capsule should be reusable and has to be equipped with an escape tower. It is estimated that the innovative design of CUV will make the new spacecraft many times safer than the shuttle launch system of NASA. In fact, that CEV capsule is planned to be a shuttle successor capable of going to the Earth orbit. Since 2005, two great aerospace teams, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman / Boeing, have been competing for the CEV contract of NASA.

     It is planned that, after landing on the Moon, the CEV capsule will remain under automatic control. To descend to the lunar surface, astronauts will leave the capsule in the lander, and, at the end of the mission, will blast off homeward in the upper segment of the lander. The CEV landing platform will be left on the Moon keeping supplies for other manned lunar missions. Just like in the Apollo program, the capsule will land onto the Earth with the help of parachutes, but new equipment, such as rockets and airbag cushions, will help to make the landing targeted. While astronauts of the Apollo missions landed at sea, the future lunar explorers will hit the mother ground somewhere at the West Coast.

     Further lunar plans of NASA are even more daring. After the initial manned lunar landing in 2018, NASA is projecting to continue with at least two annual missions to the Moon, and some of them will remain on the lunar surface for up to six months, which would probably require building of a human camp, or a base, on the Moon. Another point is that CEV would be able to reach any lunar location so that no part of the Moon remains unexplored. NASA researchers have already offered the perfect location to establish a lunar base, a crater rim close to the North Pole, as it is almost constantly illuminated by the sunlight and is situated near the suspected stores of frozen water. If the presence of ice on the Moon is confirmed, its supplies would provide future astronauts with vital drinking water and, possibly, even breathable air and rocket fuel to launch further missions to the Mars. Actually, the current lunar vision of the White House is closely related to the US plans to turn the Moon into the launch ground for future exploration of the Mars.

     However, NASA is not the only publicly funded space agency on earth with far-reaching plans for lunar exploration and colonization. The European Space Agency already started its own lunar mission back in 2003, when they launched to the lunar orbit SMART-1 probe, equipped with a high-technological ion engine. The spacecraft of the first European lunar mission is still orbiting the Moon with the purpose of collecting valuable scientific data. It has special sensors to explore the bottom of shadowed lunar polar craters, which would reveal hidden areas of lunar topography. SMART-1's SIR (Infrared Spectrometer) and micro-cameras with advanced characteristics are designed to map the insides of those "sun-shy" craters. Another side of the European mission is to search for frozen water and traces of possible historic organics on the Moon. The spacecraft is not planned to land, but its purpose is to collect as much lunar information as possible for the success of future manned lunar missions.

     Other countries, such as Russia, India, China, and Japan, have their own plans in relation to the Moon. One of the top NASA officials has recently commented that he believes that China will be back to the Moon with its manned mission sooner than the USA, and that the American people will probably not like that. Indeed, on September 17 Beijing confirmed its daring intentions to go to the Moon. And if similar plans from the side of the leading "Moon players" USA and Russia do not cause any surprising reaction but actually even expected, the international attitude to the ambitious Chinese lunar project is filled with wonder. However, Beijing has already scheduled to send its spacecraft Chang'e I into the orbit of the Moon until the end of the year 2007, which was recently confirmed by a top Chinese official representing China's Commission of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence. The spacecraft, which is already on a launch site, is designed to survey the surface of the Moon and collect scientific data. The second phase of the Chinese lunar program will be to land a rover on the surface of the Moon in 2012 and bring back samples of lunar material collected by a robotic vehicle. Interestingly enough, China links its lunar dreams to cooperation with Russia. Roskosmos, the Russian Space Agency, conducted its third meeting on deep-space exploration, including lunar plans and the issues of the Russian-Chinese space cooperation, in June this year. In accordance with Roskosmos reports, there were numerous discussions of various aspects of joint Russian-Chinese Moon studies.

     Apart from China, Russia has its on prospects about the Moon. Its planned lunar program, called Luna-Globe, is scheduled to start in 2012 with unmanned exploration of mineral deposits, remote sensing, and inner structure of the Moon. After that, the Russians plan to land onto the Moon an advanced heavy rover of the new generation. Surprisingly, those missions will be linked to space cooperation with India, which will provide scientific equipment, the rover, a transfer rocket, and even a launching site for the Russian lunar flights. As to the manned lunar mission, Russia plans to launch it in 2025 with a subsequent establishing of a permanent lunar base within the years 2027 - 2032.

     Meanwhile, Japan has taken its part in the lunar marathon by launching a lunar probe, Selen, together with two smaller satellites, to fly towards the Moon earlier this month. It is expected that Selen will reach the orbit of the Moon by the end of October.

     All those hot lunar plans of the humankind will eventually bring up a serious question about the ownership of the Moon. Would the USA, Russia, and already also China, Japan, India, and the European Union have a right to claim the ownership of the Moon's parts just because they have landed there and planted a flag of their countries on the lunar surface? The international community still has to arrive to a decision about the law of ownership on the Moon and other distant planetary bodies. But it seems like the colonial history of the earth will soon repeat itself in space.

© 2007 Lunacorp.com

 

 
The Moon © 2007 Lunacorp.com