The space race for the Moon and beyond to Mars is hotting up. The launch of Artemis-1 by the NASA will set off a phase of hectic activity focussed on intensely exploring the Moon.
Following close is UAE’s mission to the Moon slated for a launch on November 28. The Falcon-9 rocket of Space X has been contracted by the Emirate to launch the mission from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The hurricane Nicole that struck off the coast of Florida had temporarily raised some question marks on the dates of Artemis-1 and the United Arab Emirates missions. For Artemis, it was the third attempt, after two postponements due to technical problems.
The Chinese have already landed their mission on the lunar surface in 2019, joining US and Russia the two space powers, who achieved this long ago. India narrowly missed entering this exclusive club when the lander-Vikram crashed on the lunar surface in July 2019 during the Chandrayaan-2 mission.
As things stands, half a dozen nations—US, China, India, UAE, ESA and Japan are having their eye on the Moon.
Big dreams of billionaires
The excitement in outer space is further heightened with billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson unveiling their own plans that include colonising the Moon and the Mars to sending tourists regularly to outer space in the present decade itself.
Space X, Elon Musk’s company which has been making rapid progress is targeting 2024 to send people to the Red Planet. The company has established huge capabilities and also has mastered the reusable rocket technology which makes space flights more economical. The NASA has contracted it with sending cosmonauts and material to the ISS (International Space Station) in recent years. It’s Falcon series of rockets is the most powerful and the heaviest rocket can place over 50 tonne of payload into the orbit.
On the other hand, Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, had announced plans a couple of years ago of building a colony on the Moon and sending humans to Mars. His space company, the Blue Origin is working hard to achieve the goal. Jeff Bezos also expressed willingness to joining hands with the NASA and ESA to accelerate the programme.
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, British Virgin Group and owner of Virgin Galactic have demonstrated their intent with personally flying into space in their specially built, reusable aircraft in 2021, realising their own personal dreams and starting off a race into the long term, lucrative business of space tourism.
Artemis and US efforts to revisit Moon after 50 years
The launch of the Artemis Programme revives the interest of the US in the Moon, though NASA is clear that it’s destination is the Mars. It wants to be the first to land a human on the Red Planet, where the possibilities of human life surviving have been exciting space scientists for decades. The US has already landed the Mars Rover, which has been scooping tons of imagery and data.
NASA primarily wants to send a cosmonaut to the Mars like it did in 1969 of successfully sending the first human ( Neil Armstrong) to set foot on the Lunar surface. While it beat the Russians half a century ago it now wants to overtake the Chinese, who have launched an aggressive space programmes. In addition, it wants to push the big private players’ ambitions and also spur interest among the younger generation in space exploration.
Between 1969-72, NASA’s Apollo missions up to 17 put 12 astronauts on the Moon. It was a huge victory and a culmination and realisation of John F Kennedy’s bold announcement that America will land a human on the Moon by end of the 1960s. The powerful Russians, had an upper edge in the space race achieving several firsts including sending the first humans into outer space.
The multi-billion dollar, Artemis programme is aptly named and will be a continuum of sorts as (Artemis in Greek mythology is the twin sister of Apollo). According to the NASA website, “In going to the Moon, NASA is laying the foundation that will eventually enable human exploration of Mars. Moon will be the base to test technologies and resources that will take humans to Mars and beyond, including building a sustainable, reusable architecture.”
The Artemis-1 test flight is billed to be over $4 billion. On November 16, the Moon orbiting, uncrewed mission, the Orion spacecraft was launched by the world’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). It is a flight test and an opportunity to better understand the integrated system before the Space Agency embarks on flying astronauts aboard on Artemis-2.
India, China & UAE
India recently announced its Chandrayaan-3 (third lunar mission) for August 2023. The Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dr S Somnath said that the mission parameters will mostly be same as the Chandrayaan-2 though the design and engineering will be significantly different. The mission intent was to land on the lunar South Pole. The GSLV MK 3, the heaviest rocket will be used in the mission. On October 23, the same rocket successfully placed 36 satellites, which together constituted the heaviest payload that the ISRO has sent to space so far.
The Chinese have been the most aggressive and successful in recent years. In September the Chinese government approved three robotic moon missions that will do all the required spade work for the setting up of a permanent lunar base. China also intends to send taikonauts (Chinese version of astronaut) to the Moon by 2030.
Since its inception in 2004, the Chinese lunar missions called the Chang’e has succeeded in sending orbiters, successfully became the first to land on the far side of the surface in 2019 and more recently in 2020 conducted a mission that involved bringing back samples from the Moon. The emerging space power has made headway in building its own International Space Station as well as an International Lunar Research Station.
The UAE’s space programme has been the most fascinating. In July 2021 it launched the Probe called Hope which is orbiting the Mars to study the planet’s atmosphere. The UAE partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch that probe. The first Emirati astronaut, Hazra Al-Mansouri, successfully joined the ISS cosmonauts to do an 8 day stay.
The Emirates Moon Exploration Project aims to send the first Arab mission to the Moon by 2024.
| 
