Lunar Exploration Boom: Why Does Everyone Want to Explore the Moon in 2022?

After 2021, when there are no lunar missions at all, we will usher in a series of lunar exploration projects this year.

NASA will launch the Artemis programme and sponsor several other missions to send supplies and tools to the moon for future use by astronauts.

India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates will launch lunar missions this year. And many countries and private companies will also compete to board the earth's satellite this year.

These programs are unmanned space missions, and their main purpose is to lay the foundation for a sustainable stay on the moon for the next decade.

But building a space station on the moon is also not the ultimate goal of these missions. All that work is ultimately meant to be a stepping stone for manned landing on the "Red Planet", Mars.

Dr Zoë Leinhardt, an astrophysicist at the University of Bristol, believes we will see new countries join this year's new space race.

While many of these missions are to explore and understand the Moon, some have more ambitious goals.

Reinhardt said, "Some missions have ambitious goals, and the moon landing is not only to confirm a concept, but also to test new technologies and collaborative plans." ”

So, what are the plans for the moon landing this year? What are their goals? Here are the missions of this year's human exploration of the Moon:

NASA Artemis 1 and CAPSTONE missions

The goal of NASA's Artemis program is to bring humans back to the moon by 2025, a mission that will prepare for this ambitious goal starting in March.

The lunar mission will not carry people, but will be seated by a dummy in the spacecraft's command astronaut seat. This highly authentic mannequin was named Arturo Campos, an engineer at NASA; Campos was one of the most important people who safely returned Polo 13 to Earth.

At that time, the puppet Campos will be responsible for testing the spacesuit, and the Artemis astronauts will wear this space suit at different mission stages such as launch and into the Martian atmosphere.

During the mission, the Space Launch System (SLS), the world's strongest launch vehicle owned by NASA, will also play an important role in carrying the Orion spacecraft to the moon to test the safety of the spacecraft that will carry people.

Since the spacecraft will experience temperatures close to 2,760 degrees Celsius when it returns to Earth at high speed, NASA will pay close attention to the data of the spacecraft's heat shield.

This year, we will also see a big step forward in another important part of the Artemis plan.

It is the Capstone mission, the full name of which is "technical operation and navigation experiment of autonomous positioning system in the lunar orbit", which is a pathfinding mission in the Artemis project.

In March, NASA will launch a Microwave-sized CubeStat Capstone spacecraft to test a central lunar orbit that orbits the Earth alongside the moon to ensure the safety of astronauts' future journeys.

"The Ultimate Goal Is Mars"

When NASA obtains all the test data, it uses them to confirm the mode of operation of the Gateway, another important part of Thetimes program.

According to NASA, the Portal is a multi-purpose base for walking around the moon, providing support for humans to return to the moon in the long run.

If everything goes according to plan, In 2025, Artemis 3 will be the first manned landing on the moon after the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, which plans to send the first female astronaut and the first non-white astronaut to the moon.

Dr Hannah Sargeant, a planetary scientist at the University of Central Florida, explains that we have more ambitious goals to spend so much effort exploring the moon; the "gateway" is also a halfway point for human beings to go deeper into space exploration.

She pointed out that "the robot mission to the moon is only the first step on the blueprint, and then the next step will be to build a lunar space station, a lunar base, and finally a manned landing on Mars." ”

Missions from India, Japan, the United Arab Emirates

In addition to NASA, other countries and private companies are also looking to the moon this year.

Some of them will focus on research, and some will be responsible for carrying materials and equipment.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will continue its efforts two years ago after a failed lunar landing to plan its third lunar exploration mission, Chandrayaan-3. They will launch a spacecraft carrying a lander and a rover to the moon in the third season of this year.

Japan will also be on two challenging lunar missions this year.

Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) intends to send a homegrown lunar lander to the moon in April.

The lander, called SLIM or Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, will show off its precision landing techniques and use facial recognition systems to identify the moon's craters. The X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopic Mission (XRISM) will also travel to the Moon.

As for the Japanese space company ispace, it will also launch a lander to the moon in the second half of this year. The program, called Mission One (M1), is part of The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) commercial lunar exploration program Hakuto-R, which will deploy two lunar exploration robots.

One of them was built by JAXA. Another four-wheeled lunar rover, Rashid, is made by the Uae and will test soil on the moon.

Russia's Luna 25 mission, South Korea's Pathfinder lunar orbiter

Russia's 2022 lunar mission is called Luna 25.

This will be Russia's first lunar mission in 45 years and their first mission to the moon's south pole, which is also where NASA is considering a manned lunar mission. The Russian space agency Roscosmos plans to launch the mission's lander in July 2022.

A month later, the Korean Aerospace Agency's Korea Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics will also launch the South Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) to the moon in August 2022.

The KPLO will explore the lunar surface and pave the way for future missions to land at the moon's poles.

NASA Commercial Robots

Private companies are also participating in this moon landing boom.

Under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Service Program (CLPS), several space companies will bid to provide transportation services that transport payloads to the lunar surface.

Houston, Texas-based Intuitive Machines plans to use a six-legged lunar robot called Nova-C to transport to the lunar surface in early 2022.

Subsequently, Astrobotic Technology, based in Pennsylvania, WILL launch its mission in mid-2022. The company's Peregrine Mission 1 will carry payloads used as scientific research, including a box-shaped quadruped lander.

What are the goals of these tasks?

Sarkin pointed out that many lunar missions will be dedicated to investigating the lunar environment, and then learn how to protect astronauts and spacecraft from dangerous threats such as lunar dust and strong solar wind. The mission also gave scientists the opportunity to test prototype tools and experiments that could be used to make resources such as water.

"We want to make sure that these machines are functioning properly before we do manned missions and make astronauts dependent on the resources they make," she said, "and ultimately, these resources may be used to produce fuel for travel to Mars."

"The moon is also a testing ground for testing some of the technologies that will eventually be hoped to be used on the Red Planet. The Moon is closer to us, a journey of three days, not Mars, and it will take at least six months to reach. ”