Russia launches lunar lander - declaring space race

[Robert Zwilling]

Looks like the Moon is not that easy after all.

1) India: Chandrayaan-3, successfully got to the moon. but was unable to be revived after 2 week shut off.

2) Russia: Luna-25, crash landed on Moon

3) United States: Peregrine Mission 1, running out of fuel after 2 days, basically still in Earth orbit, probably not going to the Moon.

4) Japan: SLIM robotic spacecraft, entered lunar orbit Dec. 25, setting up a moon landing attempt scheduled for Jan. 19.

 

[Danny McG]

And we may not see viable lunar bases for another 20 to 30 years.

Ha! I remember the media saying that in the early 1970s, while the original moon landings were still taking place.

 

[paranoid marvin]

The more failures we see, the more impressive become NASA's achievements of the 1960s.

 

[Omits]

Russia had a successful Luna space programme until Luna-24 landed on the moon in 1976.There is some interesting footage on YouTube of the Russian missions to Venus. The scientific community in Russia has been crippled by a brain drain and a drop in government funding. More recently, it has also lost income from launching Western European satellites. I believe the Luna-25 launch was politically motivated, a demonstration that Russia is still a rich and powerful country . The Chinese and, to a lesser extent India, are doing the same thing. The Americans also need the motivation of being the top dog . The space race will only happen , if you have more than one contenders.

A race to show who has the biggest dick!

 

[Omits]

Kennedy's speech was both mesmerising and astonishing. It left no-one in any doubt that the US would put a man on the Moon, no matter the cost. you knew it would be done. Since the last person set foot on the Moon in 1972 we only seemed to be going backwards in our vision of the future. Yes, great things have been achieved with space stations, with probes and the Mars Rover. But the determination to send humans beyond close orbit seems to be notable by its absence.

Put simply, why is it more than 50 years since we set foot on the Moon? I think perhaps its that we've realised how foolhardy it was, and how incredibly lucky we were. Given the advances in technology, I think that we are now more aware of the hazards of space travel, even 'short haul' to the Moon.

Doesn't say much for Mars then! It's likely any government would commit ever increasing funding so it's going to be stop start all the way adding decades to any Space Project. Likely also be down to private enterprise.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Next Lunar Landing Jan 19, by Japan. Their spacecraft has been orbiting the Moon since late December. SLIM, Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, features a very interesting set of probes. Lunar Excursion Vehicle 1 (LEV-1) moves using a hopping mechanism and comes equipped with wide-angle optical cameras and direct-to-Earth communications equipment. Its science payloads are a thermometer, radiation monitor, and an inclinometer for measuring slopes and elevation.

The second probe is baseball size, developed by JAXA and Japanese toy giant Takara Tomy, it can change its shape.

To conserve fuel, the path to the Moon used the Earth and the Moon's gravity to power the spacecraft, which is why it took so long to get to the Moon.

Tomy, the Japanese toy company that does most of the engineering for Transformer toys designed a novel lunar probe named SORA-Q. Tomy specializes in using the fewest number of interconnecting parts using an economy based on efficiency. The Japanese toy industry has proven to be remarkedly skilled at making small things get bigger that actually do something. The amount of space that space cargo takes up is an important factor in building a space mission. It took 6 years to design and is built to operate autonomously. It starts out as a sphere, opens into 2 hemispheres which become the wheels. It has 2 cameras and a tail for stability. Depending on which wheel is turning determines if it goes left, right, or if both together it goes straight. It travels using a wiggling motion. It has a small battery which will only last for 2 hours, but if it is successful it could launch a new way of making space hardware.

There is also a Multi-Band Camera (MBC) that can determine the composition of olivine by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflected off the olivine. It is hoped that the area where SLIM will be landing will be original mantle material so it can analyze material without digging a deep hole.

The equipment is only expected to last 1 lunar day as it has no provisions for surviving the cold lunar night.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The idea of a vaccine is being explored that can prevent and mitigate muscle and bone weakening, a common health problem for people experiencing long-term spaceflight and for aging seniors. The bone and mineral loss for astronauts after a 6 month trip in space is equivalent to what older adults experience after 20 years of life on Earth.

To stop the body atrophy that living in space causes, astronauts exercise 2 hours a day while in space. If they didn't exercise they would be unable to walk when they get back to Earth.

The senior population is growing larger every year which means there are plenty of people to test the proposed vaccines on here on Earth. Besides helping seniors and astronauts the treatment can also be used for people who were injured or fell ill and are going to be moving around a lot less for awhile.

There would still need to be methods devised to normalize the way organs work, such as the digestive system. It works after a fashion but is definitely impacted.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

A re-examination of Mars radar surface scans from 2007 has yielded the possibility that there is a lot more water under the surface than originally thought. The amount of water "found" could fill the red sea or cover the surface of Mars in 5 to 9 feet of water. The water was found away from the polar regions. There are other interpretations of what could match the density of the material found.

The ice, if it is, has been found under one of the biggest dust piles on Mars. It contributes a lot of dust to the massive dust storms. The water idea is based on the idea that if it was compacted dust under the dust deposits, the material would be a lot denser. The radar scan signatures also resemble those done at the poles where they are believed to be ice.

There is an engineering contest underway to develop methods of purifying water found under the Moon's surface. The same methods could be used on Mars.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Supposedly flying in the sky is the safest way to travel. Probably had something to do with quality control when it was a real job. We have reached the point where we need a space patrol service service to fix space side breakdowns. Would have been nice if a satellite repairman from one of the streaming tv services could have zipped right on over to the Peregrine Mission 1 when it ran out of gas and brought it back down to Earth. The flight insurance probably doesn't cover everything. Now the Moon needs a roadside assistance rover to jumpstart dead batteries and dust off dust covered solar cells.

The SLIM lander gets an A+ for sticking the soft landing after using a minimal amount of fuel to get to the Moon. But maybe it wasn't soft enough as the solar panels aren't working so the battery isn't recharging. It could be as simple as the solar cell panels are not facing the sun. The landing system was guided by visual inputs. The visual inputs were probably hooked up to an AI programming module which might have been too busy writing in its blog about successfully landing on the Moon.

Apparently its not known if it landed inside the 300 foot target zone. This takes the randomness out of landing spacecraft on the Moon. Everyone else is happy when the craft lands inside a 6 mile wide landing zone. The two probes were released just before the lander touched down and are sending back data to Earth. That was done to perhaps ensure they could do their stuff even if the lander crash landed. We'll have to wait to see what can be done before the battery dies or one could always hope that the solar cells will start working before the battery dies.

 

[J Riff]

 

[Robert Zwilling]

More Moon noise. The Chinese will be testing bricks made out of simulated lunar soil for construction purposes on the Moon. The test bricks will be left outside of the Chinese space station, Tiangong, for 3 years to see how well they fare in harsh space conditions. After studying lunar soil the Chinese found that the volcanic ash from the Changbai Mountains is very similar to lunar soil composition. They plan on running processed lunar soil in large 3-D printers like the kind that build concrete houses on earth. It might be possible to build structures on the Moon without anyone being there. The cost of shipping materials to the Moon is around $8,000 per pound. By using lunar soil to build buildings that could substantially reduce the cost of building lunar bases. The same technique could be used on Mars, where the shipping cost is extremely high.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

Possibly the Dragon capsule could be the one that gets people back to the Moon first as the Lockheed Orion project pushes out their launch date out yet another year. Originally scheduled for 2025, it is now estimated to be in 2026. This pushes the manned Artemis 3 mission from 2026 to 2027. Nasa expects that they will still be the first to get back to the Moon. The Dragon capsule is currently scheduled to go the Moon in 2028. The Chinese are planning to get to the Moon by 2030.

The Orion capsule is having problems with its heatshield design. The expansion of the heatshield is not evenly distributed which caused unexpected damage. The capsule doesn't smoothly reenter the atmosphere. Instead it skips across the atmosphere like a stone skipping across the water. In response to the uneven melting of the of heatshield the angle of reentry will probably be changed.

The Apollo heat shield had an underlying honeycomb structure that was filled with heat resistant epoxy. The Dragon capsule has a similar design, honeycomb, but uses their own proprietary materials. They were originally going to be using stainless steel tiles for the outer surface but changed them to a ceramic tile which can take more heat.

The Orion heat shield has no underlying honeycomb structure, instead the heat resistant material is composed of blocks that are glued in place. The shape of the blocks and the way they are glued down might be changed. Using blocks is cheaper than building a honeycomb structure. Even though the heat shield came apart in unexpected fashion, it is supposed to wear away evenly, not come apart in chunks. The temperature inside the capsule was still okay. Changes/improvements to the environmental system will also be required before it is ready to fly people around.

 

[Pyan]

The capsule doesn't smoothly reenter the atmosphere. Instead it skips across the atmosphere like a stone skipping across the water

This is a stock SF method for an emergency re-entry into the atmosphere, though, used in several hard SF books and movies. Interesting that it doesn't seem to work in real life.

 

[Swank]

This is a stock SF method for an emergency re-entry into the atmosphere, though, used in several hard SF books and movies. Interesting that it doesn't seem to work in real life.

Doesn't work with this particular combination of materials. Hardly damning of the concept.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The Dragon capsule uses thrusters to first slow down then renters the atmosphere at a carefully controlled angle. If the angle is wrong it would likely be catastrophic. The Orion capsule uses the skipping maneuver to slow down. It has small jets to orient the alignment of the heat shield. The Orion is the only one to currently use a skipping maneuver to slow down. The Russian capsules do not use the skip maneuver and have a flexible reentry program to cover different situations.

The skip maneuver has been used to bring unmanned craft back from the Moon. The skip maneuver is also used to slow down space craft entering into orbit around Mars or the Moon. The thinner atmospheres of the Moon and Mars are much easier to slow down in and create less stress on the craft. These craft are also smaller than the manned capsules. Perhaps the honeycomb framework holds together better than the array of blocks glued together. The skip maneuver seems to have a lot more variables to deal with than a controlled reentry straight into the upper atmosphere.

The Chinese capsule, Shenzhou model, can either use the skip maneuver or just enter the atmosphere but it has never used the skip maneuver. The Shenzhou capsule is not reusable. They are designing a reusable capsule, the Mengzhou series which will use the skip maneuver. Its been flying test flights since 2020 and is supposed to go into regular use by 2025 or 2026 and then to the Moon in 2030.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

My money is on the Chinese.

 

[JunkMonkey]

...
The skip maneuver is also used to slow down space craft entering into orbit around Mars or the Moon. The thinner atmospheres of the Moon and Mars are much easier to slow down in and create less stress on the craft.
...

The Moon has an atmosphere?!

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The atmospheres are very thin compared to what we think of an atmosphere. I guess as long as there is some gravity there is layer of something floating above the surface. Interactions with solar energy can breakdown the gasses into other compounds.

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is less than 1 percent of Earth's atmospheric pressure. It is an atmosphere because there are collisions between gas molecules. There are a number of gasses and various kinds of dust. Mars has 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon and 0.13% oxygen, trace amounts of carbon monoxide, water, and intermittent traces of methane. The dust is kicked up by the wind, a product of Mar's weather, primarily powered by carbon dioxide.

The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere as such. It is called an exosphere that contains helium, argon, neon, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, oxygen, and nitrogen. An exosphere is the uppermost layer of an atmosphere where it comes into contact with outer space. There are no collisions of gas molecules in an exosphere. The total mass of these lunar gases is about 55,000 pounds, almost nothing. The gasses fall to the surface when the sunlight goes away at night and rises back up when the surface gets in the sunlight again.

The dust in the Moon's exosphere is apparently created by small meteorites hitting the surface. There are trace amounts of radioactive isotopes of radon and polonium in the atmosphere, usually due to radioactive decay from the lunar interior. Spectrometers on Earth have also detected trace amounts of sodium and potassium in the atmosphere. No idea how the atoms get into the air, that doesn't happen on Earth, too much stuff to react with.

 

[Swank]

The atmospheres are very thin compared to what we think of an atmosphere. I guess as long as there is some gravity there is layer of something floating above the surface. Interactions with solar energy can breakdown the gasses into other compounds.

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is less than 1 percent of Earth's atmospheric pressure. It is an atmosphere because there are collisions between gas molecules. There are a number of gasses and various kinds of dust. Mars has 95.32% carbon dioxide, 2.7% nitrogen, 1.6% argon and 0.13% oxygen, trace amounts of carbon monoxide, water, and intermittent traces of methane. The dust is kicked up by the wind, a product of Mar's weather, primarily powered by carbon dioxide.

The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere as such. It is called an exosphere that contains helium, argon, neon, ammonia, methane, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, oxygen, and nitrogen. An exosphere is the uppermost layer of an atmosphere where it comes into contact with outer space. There are no collisions of gas molecules in an exosphere. The total mass of these lunar gases is about 55,000 pounds, almost nothing. The gasses fall to the surface when the sunlight goes away at night and rises back up when the surface gets in the sunlight again.

The dust in the Moon's exosphere is apparently created by small meteorites hitting the surface. There are trace amounts of radioactive isotopes of radon and polonium in the atmosphere, usually due to radioactive decay from the lunar interior. Spectrometers on Earth have also detected trace amounts of sodium and potassium in the atmosphere. No idea how the atoms get into the air, that doesn't happen on Earth, too much stuff to react with.

So how much atmospheric slowing can a spaceship get from the moon's non-atmosphere?

 

[Robert Zwilling]

It used on Mars not on the Moon.