![]() ![]() “If water ice is present in quantities and in a distributed state that is recoverable, that would be valuable,” Kring says. The most tantalizing volatile on the moon is H2O. These pockets of darkness, among the coldest places in the solar system, may contain deposits of substances that scientists call volatiles-compounds that would sublimate to gas in the sunlight. This casts perpetual shadows on some parts of the craters. At the south pole, however, the sun never sets, and instead circles slowly around the horizon. On much of the moon, one cycle of day and night lasts about 28 Earth days. ![]() They include some of the oldest and largest lunar craters and hold clues about the state of the solar system more than 3.5 billion years ago, when both the moon and Earth were being pummeled by asteroids. The craters at the moon’s south pole have entranced scientists for decades. “It is really a fascinating landscape.” Searching for resources It’s topography is extreme, with these really large craters, very tall mountains,” says Anthony Colaprete, the project scientist for the VIPER mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in California. “The south pole is an incredible, incredible world. This jagged landscape has areas that never see sunlight, where scientists believe deposits of water ice may have accumulated-a vital resource for establishing a human outpost on the moon. This type of precision landing will be needed in the future to explore the deep craters and rugged slopes of the lunar south pole. By contrast, the Chandrayaan-3 landing zone was an ellipse about four kilometers wide. During the final descent, a sophisticated radar will help the spacecraft land within 100 meters of its target. The eight-foot-tall craft will orbit the moon before attempting a pinpoint landing using image recognition technology to identify craters and precisely determine its location. JAXA may not have to wait that long, though, as its SLIM lander could launch this week. Future missions will carry on the exploration of the lunar surface-India could return in a few years during a proposed joint mission with Japan. They have already accomplished their most important goal: safely landing and deploying. The rover will analyze the mineral composition of the area, while the lander will use a seismometer to listen for “moonquakes”-which can occur as the moon slowly cools and contracts-as well as measure temperatures and atmospheric conditions.īut when the sun sets on Chandrayaan-3, the rover and lander are expected to go dark forever. “It’s far more ancient than any of the Apollo landing sites, and … geologic studies of that terrain are very exciting.” “They are in this near-polar terrain, which is very old,” he says. On Earth, this would be roughly equivalent to the outer coasts of Antarctica, though it is still “a long way from the pole at 90 degrees,” Kring says. “It’s going to be fun.” Dialing in the landingĬhandrayaan-3 landed at about 69 degrees south latitude, closer to the lunar south pole than any craft before it. Other major missions, such as NASA’s VIPER rover and China’s Chang’e 6 sample return, are expected to launch in 2024, poised to reveal new parts of the moon ahead of the Artemis III mission to return humans to the surface. A Japanese lander called SLIM, or the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, is slated to launch Saturday, August 26, hitching a ride with a new space telescope, both developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). After that time, the area will plunge into a two-week long lunar night that the two spacecraft are not expected to survive since they run on solar power.īefore long, however, a new wave of robots could join the Pragyaan rover and Vikram lander on the moon. The rover, whose name means “wisdom” in Sanskrit, and the lander Vikram, named for the Indian scientist Vikram Sarabhai who helped establish ISRO, will take scientific measurements for about two weeks. That team had more reason to celebrate the next morning in India when a small rover named Pragyaan “ramped down from the lander and India took a walk on the moon!” ISRO reported. “From the day we started rebuilding our spacecraft after Chandrayaan-2 experience, it has been breathe in, breathe out, Chandrayaan-3 for our team,” said Kalpana Kalahasti, the associate project director of the mission, after the craft touched down. India’s first craft to attempt a moon landing in September 2019 also crashed. ![]() A lander built by the Japanese company Ispace-carrying a rover built by the United Arab Emirates-ended catastrophically in April after the spacecraft misjudged its altitude and ran out of fuel. Just days before the Chandrayaan-3 landing, Russia’s Luna-25 lander smashed into the surface after an engine failed to properly shut down. The difficulty of a moon landing has been underscored by a recent string of failures. ![]()
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