The giant SLS launcher has just been transferred again to its launch pad in Florida for final tests before its first flight this summer and the sending of an Orion capsule to the Moon. The Artemis program, which must bring astronauts to the surface of our natural satellite, is on the right track. This time, it will no longer be a short visit under the American flag alone, as with Apollo, but a long-term establishment, in cooperation with NASA’s traditional allies. For Europe, this therefore represents a new market, with new strategic niches to occupy in transport logistics, telecommunications, accommodation for astronauts, navigation and even in all the electronic subsystems adapted to this particularly hostile.
Towards a lunar economy
The old continent already has champions in these specific areas who will have to play their cards to win. Thales Alenia Space is already well placed, since all the pressurized modules of the future Gateway station are already being developed and manufactured in its Turin factory. “We will provide an ecosystem for astronauts to live, work and rest in a harsh environment. It is little more than a series of pressurized containers”, assures Massimo Claudio Comparini, deputy general manager of Thales Alenia Space. With the appearance of private orbital stations around the Earth, he sees a similar movement appearing around and on the surface of the Moon as soon as the astronauts return there. A lunar economy will appear quickly, although at first it will be mainly financed by government customers.
The European Space Agency, already responsible for two of the Gateway modules, has also looked into the telecommunications and navigation needs of missions in the Martian environment and is proposing a dedicated constellation, called Moonlight, around the Moon, on the basis of a public-private partnership. “If lunar orbiters and landers no longer need to carry all the systems necessary for their navigation far from the Earth and for their links with the Earth, it will be possible to optimize their size”, explains Élodie Viau, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications at the European Space Agency (ESA). At the price of the kilogram to be sent to the Moon, the savings made will quickly be substantial. “There are 250 missions planned, which could benefit from it, and they represent an investment of more than 1.5 billion dollars”announces Elodie Viau, who sees in it the beginning of a lunar economy.
Develop sustainable systems
At Sodern, world leader in the field of navigation systems and in particular star finders, we are interested in the proximity operations market: rendezvous, formation flights or moorings, which will require sensors for which the equipment manufacturer French has already demonstrated its skills with the ATV program during which the European 20-ton cargo ships had made moorings so soft that they were at the limit of detectable, and with sub-centimeter precision. Sodern will also produce the camera responsible for the recovery of Martian samples by the ERO probe around Mars.
For Franck Poirrier, CEO of Sodern and representative of space equipment manufacturers at Cospace, lunar logistics requires thinking about programs differently:“Until now, with the exception of the International Space Station, we have always worked on consumables. Far from Earth, we will have to develop more sustainable systems.. This will imply more resilience, robustness and simplicity, as well as a certain genericity in the products. What will be valid around the Moon will be even more so around Mars but may also have ” spin off “ in low orbit, in particular with troubleshooting and in-orbit services.
The experience acquired by European subcontractors, such as Erems, electronics supplier on numerous scientific and manned missions for four decades, will be key, as Yohann Ballot, director of commercial development for the Toulouse equipment manufacturer, reminds us. “The environment is no worse around the Moon than around the Earth, where it can already be very aggressive”he stresses, the main difficulty is the distance, which makes any intervention more difficult, hence the importance of rock-solid reliability.