/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/HYMG6UGJN5GLFOWR6YJPREOZXY.jpg?fit=768%2C433&ssl=1)
Landing on the Moon again after having done so more than half a century ago is costing a lot. Of the last six attempts, only one – the Indian probe Chandrayaan 3 – was successful. The others, for one reason or another, have not been classified as such. But has the experience really been so disastrous?
Without a doubt, three missions did indeed end in disaster. First, the Hakuto-R Japanese, whose altimeter was confused by the rugged landscape and kept it hovering at 5 kilometers high until it ran out of fuel. She was followed by the Russian Luna 25, which crashed after failing to turn off its retromotor in time during what was intended to be the first moon landing at the Selenite south pole, thus managing to beat the Indian ship by a few days. Afterwards, the Pilgrim, a private project with a NASA grant, could not close a valve that injected gas into the fuel tank to put it under pressure. The tank cracked and its contents were lost into space. Without auxiliary propulsion, it missed the Moon and fell back to Earth.
Japan also tried it in January of this year with SLIM, an experimental vehicle only intended for testing precision moon landings. The operation appeared to have gone well, including the launch of two tiny robots equipped with television cameras just before landing. But something had gone wrong and it became evident when one of the robots transmitted a photo of the SLIM, perched on the ground on its nose. His photocell panel, intended to point east to take advantage of the Sun, had remained oriented toward the west and was not generating power.
Telemetry and then an image obtained during descent confirmed the reason for the failure. At 50 meters above sea level, the nozzle of one of the two braking motors had detached and fallen to the ground. With the impulse unbalanced, the SLIM He began to cartwheel while his guidance system struggled to stabilize him. In those conditions he made landfall.
It says a lot about the skill of Japanese engineers (and thanks to the low lunar gravity) that the probe reached the ground in one piece. To find a simile, it was as if a car lost a front wheel while speeding down the highway. The landing software not only managed to brake sufficiently, but led to SLIM to land 60 meters from the planned point; If it hadn’t been for the breakdown I would have made it ten times closer.
On the Moon, the Sun rises and sets as on Earth, but its day from dawn to dusk lasts two weeks. We only had to wait for noon to arrive for the photoelectric panel to receive light again and communications to resume. He SLIM It does not have heaters, so no one expected it to survive the freezing lunar night. But to general surprise, when the new dawn arrived it transmitted again. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, gives itself—somewhat harshly—a score of 60 out of 100, a mere pass for this first attempt. Right now, so much SLIM like the American Odysseus They prepare for a new night in the hope of waking up.
The misstep of ‘Odysseus’
As is known, the last mission to the Moon was carried out in February, by Intuitive Machines, another private company under contract with NASA. Was the Odysseus which had on board six technological experiments and as many commercial cargoes, among them a sculpture by Jeff Koons composed of a hundred metal spheres that reproduce the Moon in different phases.
The journey of Odysseus It did not pose problems until shortly before beginning the landing phase. Flight controllers observed that the laser altimeter was not working: it was still in test mode and no one had removed the protections to prevent any technician from being accidentally blinded during pre-launch tests.
With the altimeter disabled, landing was impossible. The technicians were forced to improvise an emergency solution, taking advantage of one of the loads supplied by NASA, which also contained a LIDAR and which would serve, precisely, to measure distance and speed of descent, although it was experimental equipment.
The landing, under the improvised automatic control, was almost normal until the last moment. It touched down at 10 kilometers per hour, but with a remaining horizontal speed of 3 km/h, that of a pedestrian. And that was the cause of the failure. As it slid over the ground, one leg tripped over a hole or a rock, the ship stumbled and overturned.
By pure chance, almost all the loads, installed on the outside of the ship, were left on the top or on the sides. Also solar panels. The only one that ended up underneath, perhaps crushed, was the Koons sculpture, anchored to one of the sides. Upon learning this, the artist reacted delighted, since this way his work would be even closer to the Moon.
Before its power was depleted, Odysseus completed a fitting farewell transmission. Received today, this image from February 22nd showcases the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe.
Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you… pic.twitter.com/RwOWsH1TSz
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 29, 2024
The failure of the altimeter prevented launching a camera that should have filmed the landing. Although it is still expected to be able to expel it later to, at least, have a view of how the Odysseus. Some experiments will work even with the ship lying down. But the biggest danger for now is the cold. On the 29th night fell over the Malapert crater where the vehicle is located.
Tight budgets
Were moon landings more reliable half a century ago? The Russians tried it half a dozen times before succeeding with a capsule much smaller and simpler than the current ones. The Americans did not get their first photos of the surface until the seventh attempt; in fact, the Ranger program was almost canceled due to the unbroken string of failures. And as for automatic landings, they failed on two of their seven pre-Apollo launches.
The landing cannot be directed from Earth. The nearly 400,000 kilometers distance to the Moon introduces a delay of almost three seconds between the return trip. When the notice reached Earth that a ship was in difficulty, a second ago it would have shattered, forming a new crater.
For the companies that design them, current programs are once again first trials, for which it is normal to expect difficulties. If landing on the Moon seemed easy fifty years ago, it is because humans were at the controls of the Apollo missions. As long as everything goes as planned, a computer can direct the maneuver with robot-like precision; But when something unexpected arises, two eyes, a brain and your ability to improvise usually give better results.
Furthermore, let us not forget that, since these are commercial programs, the budgets are much tighter than those available to NASA in the years of its race against the Soviet Union, when the important thing was to win at any price. The Surveyor program (NASA’s first automated spacecraft to land on the Moon) cost 5 billion current dollars. It is estimated that building a similar vehicle today would cost between 500 and 1,000 million.
In contrast, Intuitive Machines has invested around 250 million in the project. NASA, as a client of transportation services, has contributed less than half. Even cheaper were the SLIM Japanese, which came out for 121 million, the failed Pilgrim y Berasheetfor 100 million each, or the Hakuto-Rwhich did not exceed 90.
Many companies are betting on the Moon as a new and imminent business scenario. But getting there is difficult. And expensive.
You can follow MATERIA in Facebook, X e Instagramclick here to receive our weekly newsletter.
to continue reading
_