LOL!
One fundamental challenge, says Jan Wörner, a former director general of the European Space Agency (Esa), is weight. “You are always close to failure because you have to be light or the spacecraft will not fly. You cannot have a big safety margin.”
Added to that, almost every spacecraft is a prototype. Apart from rare cases, such as the Galileo communications satellites, spacecraft are bespoke machines. They are not mass produced with the same tried and tested systems and designs. And once they are deployed in space, they are on their own. “If you have trouble with your car, you can have it repaired, but in space there’s no opportunity,” says Wörner. “Space is a different dimension.”
The moon itself presents its own problems. There is gravity – one-sixth as strong as on Earth – but no atmosphere. Unlike Mars, where spacecraft can fly to their destination and brake with parachutes, moon landings depend entirely on engines. If you have a single engine, as smaller probes tend to, it must be steerable, because there is no other way to control the descent.
To complicate matters, the engine must have a throttle, allowing the thrust to be dialled up and down. “Usually you ignite them and they provide a steady state thrust,” says Nico Dettmann, Esa’s lunar exploration group leader. “To change the thrust during operations adds a lot more complexity.”
And yet, with the first lunar landings back in the 60s, it can be hard to grasp why the moon remains such a tough destination.
FROM NASA. COMPLETELY CONTRADICTORY!!!
Astronauts explain why no human has visited the moon in 50 years — and the reasons why are depressing
Sep 15, 2023
Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who ran the agency during the Trump administration, said it’s not science or technology hurdles that have held the US back from doing this sooner.
“If it wasn’t for the political risk, we would be on the moon right now,” Bridenstine said on a phone call with reporters in 2018. “In fact, we would probably be on Mars.”
So why haven’t astronauts been back to the moon in more than 50 years?
“It was the political risks that prevented it from happening,” Bridenstine said. “The program took too long and it costs too much money.”
www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7
Japan’s hopes to become the fifth country to land a working spacecraft softly on the moon ran into difficulties on Friday after mission controllers said the probe was unable to generate electricity after touchdown.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim) was trialling new technologies for pinpoint landings, but after an apparently flawless approach and descent, the mission hit a glitch when the probe landed soon after 3pm UK time.
Although the space agency was receiving signals from Slim and a tiny rover it released moments before touchdown, a problem with the lander’s solar panels meant it was operating purely on existing battery power. It was possible the lander’s solar panels were not angled correctly towards the sun, officials said.
Russia’s first moon mission in 47 years has failed after its Luna-25 spacecraft spun out of control and crashed into the moon, dealing a significant setback to the embattled Russian space programme’s attempt to revive its Soviet-era prestige.
The state space corporation Roscosmos said it had lost contact with the craft at 1157 GMT on Saturday after a problem as the craft was shunted into pre-landing orbit. A soft landing had been planned for Monday.
“The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the moon,” Roscosmos said in a statement. It said a special interdepartmental commission had been formed to investigate the reasons behind the loss of the Luna-25 craft.
www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/20/russia-luna-25-space-craft-crashes-into-the-moon
Thu 18 Jan 2024!!!
Did any US newspapers even mention this??!!!!
Doomed Peregrine moon lander on course for fiery return to Earth
US spacecraft expected to burn up in fireball over south Pacific Ocean after failed lunar mission
A US spacecraft that malfunctioned on the way to the moon will plunge back to Earth on Thursday evening and burn up in a fireball over the south Pacific Ocean.
A fuel leak onboard the Peregrine lander had made it challenging for space agencies to track the doomed spacecraft, but as the leak subsided in recent days its path became more predictable.
Based on the latest calculations, the lander will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at about 2100 GMT on Thursday, with most of the spacecraft burning up to the east of Australia between New Caledonia and Fiji. The closest populated spot is Aneityum, the southernmost island of Vanuatu.
“The challenge with this specific object was the uncertainty of its precise orbital position due to the initial onboard venting of fuel,” said Angus Stewart, the head of space surveillance and tracking at the UK Space Agency. “Once that venting ceased, the orbit has become far more stable and we have been able to successfully track Peregrine.”
Indeed they are; Nasa is already deploying the same service procurement model with private American companies to develop expertise in landing robotic payloads on the moon. If all goes to schedule, on Christmas Eve, US company Astrobotic Technology will launch Peregrine Mission One, a lunar lander that the company has designed and built through Nasa’s commercial lunar payload services programme.
Interest in going to the moon is exploding around the world. Dr Nasr Al-Sahhaf experiences this on an almost daily basis. He chairs International Moon Day, which is observed every 20 July, after being sanctioned by the UN general assembly in December 2021. Sahhaf’s job is to interface with companies and governments across the world that have an interest in celebrating the future of lunar exploration.
“I found that there is not only global interest in humanity’s going back to the moon, but also there is this clear zest to explore and settle the moon as if to make up for such a long absence since the Apollo missions,” says Sahhaf.
PHOTO: Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon takes off from Tanegashima Space Centre on 6 September. The country’s first moon lander, it was the third mission to the moon to be launched this year. Photograph: JIJI Press/AFP/Getty Images
And that interest is also coming from many new players. Of the three dedicated robotic missions to the moon that launched this year, only one came from a traditional space power and, pointedly, failed.
(1):
On 19 August, Russia lost control of its lunar lander while attempting the descent and so Luna-25 crashed into the barren surface.
(2):
In July, India had launched the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft. It entered lunar orbit on 5 August, and then its lander successfully touched down near the lunar south pole on 23 August. This feat made India the fourth country, after the US, Russia and China, to soft-land on the moon, and the first to land at its south pole. The latter is the focus of attention for future lunar bases because of the presence of water ice in the permanently shadowed lunar craters there.
(3):
The third mission, Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (Slim), launched on 6 September from the country’s Tanegashima Space Centre Nicknamed the “Moon Sniper”, the craft is now orbiting the moon and is expected to attempt a precise landing on the surface in January.
Precision in this case means landing within just 100 metres (328ft) of a predetermined point. Such a technique will be crucial for delivering people and equipment to a designated landing pad on a future lunar base. For comparison, when Apollo 11 carried Armstrong and Aldrin to the lunar surface in 1969, their landing zone was anywhere within a landing ellipse – the region within which a probe is expected to land based on its approach trajectory – of about 11 miles by three miles (approximately 18km by 5km) in size.
www.theguardian.com/science/2023/nov/26/europe-moon-space-race-esa-india-russia-china-japan
h/t Digital mix guy Spock