Why did the United States take 51 years to return to the moon?

For the first time since 1972, the United States returned to the moon. Intuave machines loaded a robotic spacecraft on the moon at 18:23 o’clock on Thursday night, and thus became the first private company to drop a sound vehicle on the surface. Nasa asked almost $ 118 million to complete this task, and subsequently published a congratulations on the social media platform “X” and said: “Your request was made to the moon!” With the growing national space freeness and the expansion of commercial activities in the field of space, companies chased to win the title of the first private vehicle that ends up safely on the moon. None of them succeeded today. It tried an Israeli -profit company, “Spaceil”, in 2019, but his vehicle arrived very quickly and broke on the surface. Last year, ispace in Tokyo lost to contact his vehicle. In January, the astrobotic sin, based in Pittsburgh, was subjected to an accident in the engine immediately after reaching space. A hard environment and a lack of experiences since the United States managed to land on the surface of the moon half a century ago; Why do businesses and even countries have trouble doing it again? The lunar environment is hard; It is difficult to design a spacecraft that can run around on the surface. It is almost impossible to form a similar environment on the ground to test vehicles. The resources of private companies also reduced to NASA in the 1960s: ie the massive financing fund whose resources were inflated up to 4% of the total US federal budget. The biggest obstacle was perhaps in the engineers and businesses of the twentieth century who have no experience, or their experiences are very little in the field of launching lunar vehicles. More than 50 years have passed since designing and sending vehicles on the moon, so that businesses started almost nothing and worked with new technologies. “We say we have been there before, but that is not true for these businesses. It is in fact a new technology that is now ripening and has been developed so far. ‘ Back to the moon, Nasa turned his attention away from the moon to the last “Apollo” mission in 1972 to focus on spacecraft, the International Space Station and other goals. Several US departments proposed a return to the moon, but their programs did not escape political dance. But in 2017, President Donald Trump urged Nasa to launch the “Artemis” initiative to send people back to the moon. The space agency aims to be sustainable on the moon, claiming that learning to live and work will eventually help people explore the solar system. This means many profitable government contracts. Unlike the “Apollo” period, private companies currently have the ability to achieve there; With a little help from Nasa. Intertevi Machens and Astopotic have partnered with the “CLPS” program of the Space Agency, designed to encourage the development of commercial spacecraft within the “Artemis” initiative. However, there are still significant challenges facing the moon exploration. Just travel through the space vacuum to reach the moon suffer in itself. Space vehicles must handle severe temperature fluctuations, depending on the determination of any parts of the vehicle looking at the sun, and the spacecraft is often exposed to the attack of cosmic rays; These are radioactive particles flowing from the sun or from distant space, and can easily burn the unprotected electronic devices. The clash of the connections with the moon’s surface. The robust terrain, cavities and other factors distribute an uneven distribution. “If you revolve around the moon, you will eventually clash with it, because the uneven gravity will make the orbit you are moving in trouble. Therefore, you must have a navigation system that accurately determines your place and can adjust at the same moment.” Unlike the earth, with an atmosphere, it helps to protect the spacecraft that returns from the moon from falling, the moon is almost without any atmosphere. To land on the surface, all spacecraft in practice must be used in practice a form of rocket cars to gently approach the moon. Space vehicles must drive their engines accurately so that they stop almost directly over the surface. Otherwise, his collision dares. All of this requires the spacecraft to acknowledge what will fall on it. And robotic vehicles often depend on the information collected by the sensors in the vehicle, in addition to the photos of the target area previously collected, and this is often a poor level of accuracy. What makes matters more complicated is the distance from the moon from the earth. There are usually a few seconds delayed when sending orders to these spacecraft. Ayda Dove, an assistant professor at the University of Central -Florida, who works in one of the tasks of landing on the moon, says: “You must do it all independently. There is no way for any person who immediately corrects the situation, because of the speed that happens it all.” This can lead to problems like those I faced in 2023. It eventually discovered that the landing vehicle on the moon suffered from a software defect and became incorrect to estimate the high terrain at the bottom, causing fuel to be run out and destroyed. Sometimes an error occurs in the devices. In January, the Japanese Space Exploration Agency was removed from the ‘Smart Lander for Investigation Moon’, 55 meters (180 feet) of the targeted landing point. A problem, which was clear that it was in the engine, fell into the head of the vehicle, instead of his side. Despite the proper landing, the mission ended early because it could not load his solar panels properly. The Antarctic pole has another problem in the target. In the original, the company hoped to end up near the relatively flat satellite niver line line, the place where all the “Apollo” assignments fell. However, Nasa asked the company to change the location of the landing to the Antarctic area of ​​the moon; This is the place many countries are looking forward to, and India approached the decline of its “Chandrayan 3” investigation last August after the failure of a Russian effort. Data collected by robot space visiting the moon confirms that many of the Antarctic cavities may contain water bags in ice. It is possible that NASA and other parties are interested in extracting this ice, which can be used as a drink for drinking or irrigation of crops. And if the water is analyzed after its initial components – hydrogen and oxygen, it can also be used as fuel to push missiles in the future. But it is still to know the existing amount and condition of the ice. Ultimately, Nasa hopes to download astronauts within the future “Artemis” initiative in this region and rely on the first US vision from the ground of the vehicle of the “Intertev Machens” business. The area is full of cavities, and the orbit is more difficult than reaching the moon’s leveling. This may require the change of an additional engineering analysis and planning. Almost like planning a completely new mission. “We will go to completely different places on the moon that we have not gone before,” dull, although the spacecraft examining the moon that has been exposed to the Earth’s tests for a few years is the only way to see if it will succeed is to test it in space. But so that it has its boundaries. ‘If your mission is more disrupted, politicians will force you to effort. If the effort is for commercial purposes, investors withdraw. Therefore, you have an infinite number of efforts.