More traffic on the way to the moon

The US was the first country to land on the moon in 1969. With the Artemis program, the American space agency NASA now wants to return to the moon and establish a permanent presence there – as a stopover for planned missions to Mars. The first preparatory mission, Artemis 1, took place at the end of 2022 after several postponements. An unmanned Orion capsule orbited the moon. However, there were technical problems with Artemis 1, including the heat shield around the capsule.

US mission postponed until 2025
The next preparatory mission, Artemis 2, was postponed in early January by a year to September 2025. In this manned mission, the astronauts will orbit the moon without landing on it. The actual Artemis 3 moon landing mission will now not take place until 2026 because NASA needs more time to prepare.

A lunar module from high-tech pioneer Elon Musk’s SpaceX company will be used for the first landing of American astronauts on the moon since 1972. It is a modified version of SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft, which exploded during the first two launch attempts. Another test is planned in February.

Russia also wants to go to the moon again
Like the US, Russia also took a long break from traveling to the moon after the 1970s. The failed Luna 25 mission in August 2023 was supposed to initiate Russia’s return to the moon. The lander, which was supposed to spend a year collecting samples and analyzing soil, crashed onto the moon’s rocky surface – a major setback for Moscow’s hopes of building on the Soviet Union’s space legacy.

The Russian space program is also plagued by financial problems and corruption scandals. President Vladimir Putin wants to cooperate more closely with China in the field of space in the future. Since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, space has been one of the few areas where Russia and the US continue to cooperate. There are still joint flights to the International Space Station.

China’s billion-dollar project
Decades after the Soviet Union and the US, China became the third country to send a human into space in 2003. To catch up with NASA and Roscosmos, Beijing invested billions of dollars in its military-run space program: In 2012, a Chinese spacecraft, Chang’e-3, landed on the moon for the first time. Seven years later, the People’s Republic became the first country to land a probe on the far side of the moon. In 2020, a Chinese lunar robot returned soil samples to Earth for the first time in more than 40 years.

The highlight of China’s space program is the Tiangong space station, which was completed in 2022. China also wants to send a manned mission to the moon by 2030 and build a space base there – similar to the US.

In August 2023, the Indian probe Chandrayaan-3 became the first spacecraft to land on the moon’s little-explored south pole. The landing was a triumph for India’s ambitious and low-cost space program: In 2008, an Indian mission reached lunar orbit for the first time, but in 2019 the attempt to land on the moon failed. At that moment, shortly before the probe was due to land, contact with the control center on Earth was lost. This year, the Indian space agency Isro has planned a dozen missions, including the preparation of the first manned space flight: a three-day journey to Earth’s orbit.

Japan begins its attempt on Friday
On Friday, Japan also wants to join the exclusive club of lunar countries: the special thing about the mini spaceship Slim – an abbreviation of “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon” – is its precision: it should hit its target in a lunar crater with an accuracy of hundred meters, his nickname is therefore “Moon Sniper”.

Japan’s first two attempts to land on the moon were unsuccessful: in 2022, the Japanese mini-probe Omotenashi flew towards the moon with the American mission Artemis 1. But as soon as we got into space, the probe’s battery failed. And in April 2023, a lunar module from the Japanese start-up Ispace crashed on the lunar surface.