Within a few days, both NASA and Roscosmos will have to postpone or even cancel the launches of their moon rockets. The ambitious plans, which the USA and Russia are pursuing separately, are increasingly faltering.
“Artemis” and “Luna-25” – the planned lunar missions of the United States and Russia have sonorous and meaningful names. The program of the US space agency NASA is named after the Greek goddess of the moon and should not only reach the moon again as a successor to the historic “Apollo” missions, but at the same time prepare the earth’s satellite as a starting point for future Mars missions. The Russian space agency Roskosmos is no less ambitious with Luna-25. The name is a continuation of Luna 1, the probe that was supposed to hit the moon in January 1959, but then only passed it due to a piloting error. Nevertheless, Luna 1 went down in space history as the first moon and space probe.
But as ambitious as all these plans were presented, they have not yet been implemented. On the contrary, the renewed approach to the moon is surprisingly difficult for Americans, Europeans and Russians. In the USA, the launch of “Artemis 1”, an unmanned moon rocket, has been temporarily suspended after several aborted launch attempts. Most recently, a hydrogen leak on the rocket forced NASA technicians to abort. The team is currently investigating why exactly the problems occurred and what repairs are necessary, NASA manager Jim Free tried to give an optimistic outlook.
On the blog with which NASA accompanies the project, it can be read that there should be a repair attempt directly at the launch pad for at least the affected seal on the connector between a line for hydrogen refueling and the rocket. However, the rocket will probably have to go back to the hangar anyway to reset the batteries of the flight abort system. It is therefore completely unclear whether there will be another attempt at the end of September or mid-October or even later.
The delays have long added up to years. Actually, the super moon rocket SLS (Space Launch System) should already start in 2017 for an unmanned mission. But various mishaps slowed down the ambitious plans, and the Covid pandemic did the rest. In the meantime, the costs have risen to over four billion US dollars per rocket. The total costs for the “Artemis” mission are estimated at more than 30 billion US dollars, in which the space agencies of several other countries are also involved in addition to NASA and the European Space Agency ESA. Critics now consider the rocket to be technically outdated.
US President Donald Trump wanted to put US astronauts on the moon by 2024, but that proved to be neither financially nor technically feasible. NASA boss Bill Nelson, appointed by Trump’s successor Joe Biden, emphasized that he expects the first manned landing on the moon to be in 2025 at the earliest. He is sticking to this plan even after the most recent setbacks.
The “Artemis” experts could take comfort from the fact that things aren’t looking any better for the Russians either. After Luna-24 had last landed on the moon in 1976 to take soil samples and bring them to Earth, Luna-25 was actually supposed to start again in 2012 to the Earth’s satellite. However, Roskosmos has just canceled a launch scheduled for September and dashed all hopes that there could be another launch attempt in 2022. “The biggest problem affecting the launch preparation schedule is that the Doppler speed and rangefinder does not meet the technical requirements,” the Russian Space Agency said in a statement. The aim is now to start between June and October 2023. In February, the chief designer of the Russian rocket manufacturer Energiya, Vladimir Solovyov, also made it clear that Russia will probably not be sending a manned mission to the moon in the foreseeable future.
“The program of manned lunar exploration should only begin after automated systems have created an early infrastructure at the selected site of a future lunar base,” Solovyov said in a lecture. Because of the expected high costs of a moon mission, he also called a return to international cooperation necessary. This may have become even more difficult after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The annexation of Crimea had already made international cooperation considerably more difficult. The sanctions that Western countries have also imposed on the Russian space industry are leading to massive technical problems at Roskosmos. Just one example is a US-made electronic component required for a soft landing on the moon that has now been discontinued. Instead of dealing with other problems, Russian engineers had to create a replica of this component, which has now been achieved, but probably at the expense of other projects. This also makes the space station on the moon planned by the Russians by 2040 increasingly unlikely.
Russia has already said goodbye to international cooperation on the International Space Station ISS. This should end after 2024, said the new Roskosmos boss Yuri Borisov at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in July. The construction of an exclusively Russian space station will probably tie up capacities that could otherwise have been used for the moon plans.
In the 1960s, the USA finally won the race to the moon, after the Soviet Union had long been at the forefront in civilian space travel. It will always be American Neil Armstrong who first set foot on the moon. To date, the Russians have not brought anyone there. Before leaving, former Roscosmos boss Dmitry Rogozin tried to give the impression that the moon is not that important to Moscow. Russia is not ready to “participate in any race to the moon,” he said.
But just like more than 50 years ago, prestige projects like the moon missions show the real capabilities of the different actors, both technological and financial. Other countries such as India or China are already in the starting blocks with their own moon plans. China has already teamed up with Russia for the “International Lunar Research Station” and not only explored the far side of the moon with its lunar probes Chang’e 4 and Chang’e 5, but also collected rocks there and brought them to Earth. Whoever is successful in the end makes all setbacks forgotten.
