New Delhi: At the International Astronautical Congress 2024 in Milan, Italy, the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) organised a Global Networking Forum session on Innovative Lunar Lander Technologies for Sustainable Exploration hosted by AC Charania, Chief Technologist at NASA. On the panel were the people behind lunar landing missions. Tim Crain, Co-founder of Intuitive Machines, Dan Hendrickson, Vice President of Business Development at Astrobotic, Masaki Fujimoto from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and P Veeramuthuvel, Project Director of the Chandrayaan 3 Mission.
From left to right, the images captured by the spacecraft of ISRO, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines and JAXA. (Image Credit: ISRO/Astrobotic/Intuitive Machines/JAXA).
On 23 August 2023, ISRO demonstrated the capability of delivering a payload on the lunar surface at the time and place of its choosing with the soft, controlled landing of the Vikram Lander, during the Chandrayaan 3 mission. On 20 January this year, JAXA’s ‘Moon Sniper’ Slim demonstrated the capabilities of a precision landing on the lunar surface, by touching down within a 100 metre radius, with all previous missions having landing zones square kilometres in size. Also in January, Astrobotic attempted to land on the Moon with the Peregrine lander, but sprung a fuel leak. The team still managed to reach lunar distance and returned, responsibly disposing the spacecraft in the atmosphere of the Earth with a controlled reentry. The Odysseus Lander by Intuitive Machines became the first private mission to touch down on the Moon, on 23 February, paving the way for commercial operations on the lunar surface.
Everyone is building more Lunar Landers
Both the Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic are private companies that NASA is working closely with to build the capacity for regular delivery services for the Moon. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) is working with a number of ‘service providers’ whose job it is to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. Piggybacking on the rides are payloads from academy, industry and actually anyone willing to shell up cash to send stuff to the Moon. NASA plans to dispatch a regular series of landers to the Moon as part of the CLPS programme. ISRO is returning to the Moon with the Chandrayaan 4 mission, which will be followed up by the Chandrayaan 5/LUPEX mission, a collaboration between ISRO and JAXA.
Future lunar missions planned by NASA. (Image Credit: NASA).
On the gaps in technologies that need to be solved for future landers, Masaki Fujimoto said, “If the terrain is rough or has a slope, we should be able to land on that spot safely. That was supposed to be demonstrated, but, we could not because of this last 40 second trouble we had. Pinpoint landing technology and two-stage landing scheme that should come in combination, because if you tell your customer that you have a pinpoint landing technology, and the customer tells you, ‘can I land here?’, and if there is a slope, maybe you have to tell your customer, ‘I can navigate you there but I cannot land you on the surface’, which is almost like a scam.” SLIM landed in an unplanned acrobatic position, and even Odysseus stumbled on a rock.
Survivability on the Moon is essential for sustainable lunar operations
Tim Crain said, “All of these landers are very lean. What that means is once we land, we are going to get operations through the lunar day, and when the sun sets over the horizon, our systems are going to freeze, and that is it. You kind of have this one-shot mission at this scale of landing. As we begin as a cohort of organisations building landers to move to the next generation, you are talking about landers with 500 – 1,500 kg capacity, we have an opportunity to begin looking towards surviving the night. And now, these become assets and part of lunar infrastructure to provide communication nodes, navigation resources, to be a power and warming station for other vehicles, for us to have use of these systems over and over.”
The space programmes are now thinking beyond single missions. (Image Credit: NASA).
ISRO’s Chandrayaan 3 mission did not survive the lunar night. P Veeramuthuvel said, “For the future, the gaps I would say is long-term survivability. Right now missions are having one lunar day because we are heavily depending on the solar power. So we should have some mechanisms, either the systems have to be qualified for a very low temperature working conditions, because we are also planning to explore permanently shadowed regions, that as a science objective we are looking forward. So we require either nuclear resources or we need to see that any other mechanism is available to have a long-term survivability. That is going to be the key.”
The Shackleton Rim
All the major spacefaring nations are headed to the South Pole of the Moon. Dan Hendrickson focused on the challenges of having to return to the same location repeatedly, “A lot of people are really focused on going to the south pole. And yes, we need to survive the night, we are big fans of things like micro-power grids to help make that happen. We are also probably going to need things like landing pads, because we cannot have the abrasion of every lander coming down over and over again in a limited area. When you combine that with potentially even beacons to maybe do non terrain-relative navigation down to the surface. Those are things that are well within our capability to develop but they are not ready yet. So we need to work on those technology shortfalls.”
A simulation of the lighting conditions at Shackleton Rim, at the south pole of the Moon. (Image Credit: NASA SVS).
The Chandrayaan 3 mission was not the only recent Moon Lander to execute a perfect Moon Landing. In June 2024 China’s Chang’e-6 mission landed on the Moon, and successfully returned samples from the lunar far side for the first time. China did not participate in this panel with innovators from India, USA and Japan. China is working closely with Russia on the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), to rival the Artemis Basecamp by NASA.
Also Read: The Future of Lunar Exploration
