![]() ![]() Now, in the next six months, as many as six more landing attempts may come. Three other attempts, one backed by Israel, another by India's space program, and a third by a private Japanese company, ispace, have failed to softly touch down on the Moon. Three of these missions have been Chang'e landers, and all were successful. During the last decade, dating to China's Chang'e 3 lander in 2013, there have been six attempts to land on the Moon. The end result of all of this is that we are about to see a flurry of missions that will attempt to land on the Moon. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA's Artemis Program and China's lunar station goals.įinally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. ![]() The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.Ī second factor has been the rise of China's space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. ![]() There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. NASA sent probes to the far-flung corners of the Solar System, and the US space agency and Russian space program focused their human activities in low-Earth orbit, constructing and inhabiting a series of space stations. Following the Space Race in the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA and the Soviet Union backed off their Moon exploration programs. Up to half a dozen missions may launch to the lunar surface in the next six months, heralding a new era of Moon exploration. As anyone who has been paying attention to space exploration knows, the Moon is red-hot. ![]()
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