NEW YORK: The new space race is upon us, and soon the Moon will be very crowded. According to the US space agency NASA, the year 2022 will be a historic one, ushering in a “new era of lunar exploration”.
“There’s a moon rush” and “everyone is going to the moon,” chuckled at The Economist recently. But this new moon race, full of hope, is full of anxiety and apprehension due to fierce competition and superpower rivalry.
Heavy traffic in space this year, especially around the Moon, is reminiscent of the 1960s and the Cold War when space was the new battleground between the competing visions of the US and the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union enjoyed an early lead, placing the first satellite in orbit in 1957, the first probe on the lunar surface in 1959, and the first man in space in 1961. But US President John F. Kennedy vowed to keep one man. After returning her safely to the moon and before the end of the decade, the Americans soon moved on.
By 1969, the US had succeeded, making Neil Armstrong the first human to set foot on the lunar surface. But in 1972, after six Apollo missions, the program was canceled and no manned mission has returned to the Moon since then.
Since the historic Moon landings in 1969, there has been an increasing demand for manned missions to return to the lunar surface and beyond. (AFP)
President Donald Trump issued a similar directive in 2017, calling on NASA to lead the human return to the Moon and beyond. He also told the space agency that the time has come for a woman to walk on the moon.
Last year was a remarkable year for space travel, with several historic firsts. NASA was successful in landing the Perseverance rover on Mars, and piloted Ingenuity – the first helicopter to fly over the Red Planet. The space agency also launched the James Webb Space Telescope – the largest and most powerful ever built.
Another major development is the rise of the private sector as a major player in the sector, offering low-cost rocketry and launch facilities and even the introduction of space tourism. NASA’s leadership now talks about “catalyzing the space economy with a public-private partnership.”
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic have all made significant leaps in the past year, while a Japanese billionaire recently spent a week on the International Space Station.
However, 2022 will primarily be the year of the moon, with governments and private companies working in partnership to realize their ambitions.
NASA is moving away from the ISS project (above) with the upcoming Artemis Station program. (shutterstock)
NASA’s multibillion-dollar Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister, the Greek goddess of the Moon, is the largest project of its kind in the world. After 20 years of multinational cooperation on the ISS, the US and its allies are now preparing to move beyond the old space station and go deeper into space.
The Moon is believed to be rich in resources such as rare earth elements and precious metals, titanium, aluminum and – all vital components to sustain life – water. However, the Moon is not seen as an end goal, but as a “stepping stone” that is believed to be of greater reward: Mars and beyond.
For example, NASA believes that “the sooner we get to the moon, the sooner we get American astronauts to Mars.”
But it all depends on the success of phase three of the Artemis program, which will combine the technology and expertise of the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Artemis I, planned for March or April this year, will be the first unmanned flight test.
QuickFact
* The first observatory was built in Baghdad in the 8th century by the Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun ibn al-Rashid.
Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan bin Salman became the first Arab to go into space in 1985 aboard the American spacecraft Discovery.
* Today there are space programs in 9 countries of the Middle East.
* The SpaceX Starlink project has more than 1,700 satellites in low-Earth orbit.
* By 2030 more than 100,000 satellites could orbit the Earth.
Key components of Artemis include the Space Launch System rocket, which will carry the Orion capsule into lunar orbit, and Gateway – a space station that will place the Moon as a “staging point” on the lunar surface and in orbit for deep space exploration. .
As part of the test phase, the unmanned Artemis I will orbit the Moon before returning to Earth. Artemis II, which will carry a crew of four astronauts, will perform a lunar flyby, but will not land.
Finally, the fully crewed Artemis III will land near the Moon’s south pole, where astronauts will explore water, study the surface and test technologies. There they would establish an “Artemis Base Camp” to support future lunar missions. The mission is expected to take place in 2025.
Meanwhile, NASA has contracted private firms to send three robotic moon landers to excavate and bring back samples of lunar soil, raising already puzzling questions about land and resource ownership on the Moon.
According to The New York Times, there are nine Moon missions in the works led by various nations and private companies in 2022 that could “orbit, or try to land, on the Moon”. Five of them are sponsored by NASA.
Russian rockets will send five spacecraft into orbit in 2022, including two manned missions. (AFP)
Russia plans to launch five spacecraft in 2022, two of which will include manned missions and three cargo missions to the ISS. They are also working with China on a new space station, the International Lunar Research Station, which is to be launched in 2027. The collaboration is reportedly a direct reaction to his exclusion from the Artemis program.
Russia is expected to launch the Luna-25 lander in October, making it the first Russian moon landing since Luna-24 in 1976. India will also try to land on the Moon in the third quarter of 2022 after its failed mission in 2019. Its lander Chandrayaan-2 collided with the surface.
Meanwhile, Japan is planning to send its Mission 1 lander along with two robots to the Moon in the second half of 2022. One of them is the Rashid rover, developed by the United Arab Emirates.
China started 2022 by launching the Long March 2D rocket, one of 40 Chinese Long March rocket missions scheduled for 2022. China has also committed to complete its Tiangong space station this year.
All this space traffic and competitive missions to the Moon will undoubtedly intensify existing rivalries and create new possibilities of confrontation.
“We are in a time of transformational change in human use of space,” says scientist Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. (supplied)
Currently, there are only two treaties governing the behavior of states in space. These include the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and the Moon Treaty of 1979. Both appear worryingly outdated in an increasingly busy cosmic market.
The Moon Treaty in particular has only been ratified by 18 states – four of them Arab countries. Of the major powers, only France is a signatory.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for urgent dialogue about the conditions protecting human participation in outer space. A future summit, scheduled for 2023, could provide such an opportunity to establish a rules-based order for heaven.
With the speed with which nations and private companies are embracing space travel, and the bounty of business and prestige that comes with it, contenders will be well out of the starting block by the time new space race rules come in. Installation.
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