That flight will potentially mark another first - as the pioneering trip to the Moon by a commercial mission. And the United Arab Emirates is embarking on its first lunar mission with a rover called Rashid, scheduled to launch later this year.
Russia’s Luna-25 lander, scheduled for a July launch to the south polar region, will be the nation’s first trip to the surface of the Moon since the Soviet Union’s previous lunar lander mission in 1976. India’s Chandrayaan-3, currently officially slated for an August launch that might get delayed, will be the nation’s second attempt to get a lander and rover onto the lunar surface, after the failure of India’s previous lunar lander mission. Japan’s SLIM mission will test strategies aimed at making highly accurate landings on the Moon. That mission or one by the Tokyo-based company ispace, also set to launch this year, will be the country’s first foray to the Moon. Japan’s SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon), which is likely to launch sometime later this year, will attempt a pinpoint landing, with a level of accuracy no other country has ever achieved. “We are enjoying joining this new wave of lunar missions.”įour other nations are also aiming to reach the Moon in 2022. South Korea’s Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), for example, “is the first step to secure and verify Korea’s space exploration capability and obtain new scientific measurements of the Moon”, says Chae Kyung Sim, a planetary scientist at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute in Daejeon, South Korea, who is a member of the science team designing one of the mission’s instruments. The flurry of missions also signals the growing ambition of several nations and commercial players to show off their technological prowess and make their mark, particularly now that getting to the Moon is easier and cheaper than ever before. But the United States is just one of many nations and private companies that soon plan to launch missions, heralding what scientists say could be a new golden age of lunar exploration.
NASA’s US$93-billion Artemis programme might be stealing most of the limelight with its maiden launch this year because it’s the first step towards sending astronauts to the Moon. No fewer than seven missions are headed there from India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and the United States, along with several companies. The Moon will be one of the most popular destinations in the Solar System in the next year.
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