New Race to the Moon – these missions are scheduled next

Failure and success have rarely been so close together: the Russian spacecraft Luna-25 just crashed on the surface of the moon, and now India is celebrating the successful landing of its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft on the moon. The Indian spacecraft launched on July 14 and made a soft landing on the south pole of the moon on August 23.

Last weekend’s disaster ended Russia’s first lunar mission since 1976. However, the setback does not mean the end of Russian ambitions; more unmanned lunar missions are in the pipeline, according to the Russian space agency Roskosmos. Luna-26 is expected to land on the moon in 2027, Luna-27 in 2028 and Luna-28 in 2030.

And the Russians are not alone. The next mission will start on August 26: The SLIM – the abbreviation for Smart Lander for Investigating Moon – of the Japanese space agency JAXA must test a new type of landing technology and reach the intended landing point with an accuracy of 100 meters.

The race to the moon is in full swing. By 2030, more than thirty individual missions – some of which are part of larger projects – are planned by seven different countries and the European Space Agency (ESA). More than half of this is accounted for by the US, which is also the only one planning a manned lunar landing with NASA’s Artemis program; albeit in international cooperation with, among others, the European, Japanese and Canadian space organizations. An overview of the most important projects.

No human has been on the moon since Eugene Cernan was the last astronaut to leave the lunar surface on December 14, 1972. Apollo 17 was the last mission of the Apollo program, which, along with Apollo 11, took humans to another sky in July 1969. body for the first time. With this victory over the Soviet Union in the race to the moon, interest in our satellite waned and the focus shifted more towards the construction of manned space stations and other projects, such as the exploration of Mars.

But now the moon is once again the center of attention. NASA’s new Artemis program — the name refers to the Greek goddess Artemis, twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon — was initiated in 2019 by then-US President Donald Trump, also with a view to future Mars missions. The goal of the program, which consists of five main parts and several support missions, is to land astronauts in the strategically important south polar region of the moon where water ice is found.

Artemis 1 took off on November 16, 2022 and landed on December 11. The successful mission was to launch the Orion unmanned spacecraft into lunar orbit and back to Earth. The Space Launch System (SLS) served as the launch vehicle. Artemis 2 will follow in 2024 – this mission consists of a manned test flight to the moon, around which the manned Orion capsule will orbit.

At the end of 2025, the first lunar landing since 1972 should take place with Artemis 3. At least two of the four crew members should land on the surface of the satellite in a special version of the SpaceX starship Starship as a lunar module and stay there for a week. The goal is to explore the possible resources, especially water, for later missions. This time, a woman must get off first; in addition, a non-white must be part of the crew.

Artemis 4 is then scheduled for 2028, the third manned mission of the program and the second lunar landing. For the first time, there will also be a manned visit to the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) lunar space station. The first module of this space station is expected to be launched in 2025. The Artemis 4 mission will build a larger housing module there. The end of the Artemis program will then be 2029 Artemis 5, which will also be accompanied by a moon landing. This time a Blue Moon lunar module will be used; an unmanned pilot landing of the ferry is planned for 2028. Artemis 5 will also transport another module to the lunar space station.

India sent its first satellite into space in 1975, on a Soviet launch vehicle at the time. Since then, the emerging country has made great strides, and with the space program Chandrayaan (from Hindi Chandra for Moon, Jaaan for To dare) India joined the exclusive club of countries undertaking missions to the moon. The Chandrayaan-1 orbiter reached lunar orbit in 2008; Chandrayaan-2 launched another orbiter to the Moon in 2019; However, the Vikram lander that was supposed to carry the Pragyan rover to the lunar surface crashed due to a software error.

Chandrayaan-3, which landed on August 23, consists of only a lander and a rover – another lunar orbiter is not yet needed as the one from the previous mission is still active. Neither the lander nor the rover being transported are equipped with a heater. Their maximum deployment time on the moon is therefore only 14 days.

Chandrayaan-3 is actually a replay mission after the crash of the Vikram lander, which serves to test the landing technique. Originally, the next Indian lunar mission in conjunction with Japan was supposed to lead to the moon’s south polar region. If Chandrayaan-3 proves successful, this Indo-Japanese mission — dubbed the Lunar Polar Exploration Mission (LUPEX) — will now take place in 2026.

LUPEX is a joint project between the space agencies of India (ISRO) and Japan (JAXA), with India contributing the lander, while Japan will provide the under development H3 launcher and rover. LUPEX is significantly more advanced than Chandrayaan; the mission is to spend six months exploring the south polar region of the moon, including drilling to a depth of 1.5 meters for water ice.

China is pushing into space with might and main. The Chinese space agency CNSA not only operates a space station in low Earth orbit, but has also successfully launched a rover to Mars. And China is also pursuing an ambitious lunar program, which has had several successes since 2007 – most recently in 2020 with the Chang’e 5 mission (Chang’e is the Chinese moon goddess). Chang’e 5 managed to bring a soil sample from the moon to Earth – and at the same time take a picture of our satellite in the highest resolution yet.

The next mission, Chang’e 6, will repeat this feat in 2024. The eight-ton probe is expected to land on the far side of the moon, at the edge of the South Pole-Aitken Basin. After that, China plans to continue its series of unmanned explorations of the Antarctic with the Chang’e 7 (expected for late 2026) and 8 (expected for 2027) missions.

In addition to a rover, the Chang’e 7 lander will also carry a small airworthy subprobe to detect water ice. Chang’e 7 will also survey the landing area to determine its suitability for the construction of the planned International Lunar Research Station. If not, Chang’e 8 will explore another possible location. In addition to a rover, this probe will also have a small flight probe on board. This time, however, the possible extraction of noble gases from the subsurface of the moon must be investigated.

Little Israel is also closely involved in the race to the moon, although this is of course a private space mission. However, the first attempt to land a probe gently on the lunar surface failed in 2019: the lunar module crashed during landing. So far, only the Soviet Union, the US, China and recently India have managed to land softly on the moon.

The failure of Beresheet (Hebrew for Genesis) is to be compensated by the follow-up mission Beresheet 2, scheduled for launch in 2025. When the spacecraft reaches lunar orbit, the orbiter will continue to orbit the moon, while two landers are deployed at various locations on the moon. This is new: so far there has not been a mission where two landers were used at the same time. If successful, it will be the smallest lander ever used on the moon.