The moon will welcome three "little friends" intensively, each with its own highlights

The moon will welcome three "little friends" intensively, each with its own highlights

Editor's note: With the successful landing of the Blue Ghost probe of Firefly Aerospace on the lunar surface on March 2, the world has ushered in the lunar exploration boom this year. Following the Blue Ghost, the Athena probe of Intuitive Machines landed on the moon on March 6, and the Perseverance lunar probe of ispace of Japan attempted to land a few months later. Before the end of this year, another probe of Intuitive Machines, the Griffin probe of Astrorobotics, and the Blue Moon lander of Blue Origin will all start their journey to the moon.

The "Blue Ghost" probe successfully landed on the lunar surface on the 2nd. The picture shows its shadow on the lunar surface. (Visual China)

"The first private lunar probe to successfully land on the moon"

CNN reported on March 2 that the Blue Ghost probe, carrying a variety of scientific research equipment from NASA, successfully landed on the lunar surface at 16:34 Beijing time on March 2. According to reports, the Blue Ghost probe was launched from Florida, the United States on January 15 this year, and successfully entered the lunar orbit after a long flight. During the landing process, it slowly descended from the 100-kilometer-high lunar orbit with the help of a precise autopilot, and finally successfully landed in an area called the Sea of ​​Crisis in the northeast of the moon.

The Associated Press said that the Blue Ghost probe landed stably on the lunar surface, making Firefly Aerospace the first private company to send a probe to the moon without crashing or tipping over. The report said that even lunar probes developed by many national institutions have faltered during the landing process, and only five countries have successfully landed on the moon before. Last February, the Odysseus probe of the U.S. Intuitive Machines landed on the moon, becoming the first American spacecraft to softly land on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 landing in 1972, but the Odysseus flipped over during landing, causing the mission to be terminated early. Firefly Aerospace described Blue Ghost as the company's first probe to "completely successfully land on the moon," and "a small step on the moon represents a big step for commercial exploration."

Firefly Aerospace said that the Blue Ghost probe has a total mass of about 1,300 kilograms, is about 2 meters high and 3.5 meters wide. This low four-legged design provides additional stability. It has learned from the previous experience of the Odysseus rollover during landing, re-optimized the autonomous detection and control procedures during descent, and finally achieved a safe landing.

The Associated Press reported that NASA paid $101 million for the Blue Ghost mission and provided scientific instruments worth $44 million. Blue Ghost will continue to operate on the lunar surface for 14 days until the lunar night. It will use 10 scientific instruments provided by NASA to carry out multiple tasks such as lunar underground drilling, regolith sample collection, X-ray imaging, and radiation-resistant calculations.

The Mare Crisis region where Blue Ghost landed is a 340-mile-wide basin formed by the impact of an ancient asteroid. "The lunar terrain here is considered different from most of the landing sites visited by American astronauts during the Apollo lunar program, but it is more representative of the lunar surface characteristics," said Fox, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, at a press conference. "This is a scientifically strategic and productive location. We set our sights here because our future astronauts will collect scientifically significant lunar samples from here and bring them back to Earth."

Another important mission of the Blue Ghost is to verify the relevant technologies for NASA's future Artemis manned lunar landing program, including studying the impact of landing plumes on lunar soil to ensure future landing safety; at the same time, testing the feasibility of navigation on the lunar surface using GPS and Galileo satellite signals from Earth; the "weather adhesion properties test" mainly studies the performance of different material samples on the lunar surface; and the "electric dust cover" will test how to prevent harmful particles in the lunar surface weathering layer from accumulating on the surface of sensitive equipment. The U.S. "Space" website described that during the landing, the stereo camera carried by the Blue Ghost for lunar plume surface research had already started working. The weathering layer on the lunar surface is a layer of powdery fine sand, but microscopes show that they have very sharp edges and incredible destructive power, which made the astronauts of the "Apollo" mission suffer a lot on the lunar surface. "Back then, after passing through the dust raised by the lunar regolith, astronauts found that fine sand covered the visors of their helmets, damaged the joints of their spacesuits, and even penetrated into the spacecraft, destroying the vacuum seal." Because it is impossible to simulate the movement of dust in the low gravity environment of the moon on Earth, researchers could only extract data from a small amount of fuzzy data from the Apollo program. The new data obtained from this mission will provide support for the improvement of the Artemis manned lunar mission.

Athena followed closely behind

The Associated Press reported that after the successful landing of the Blue Ghost probe, the Athena probe of Intuitive Machines followed closely and also landed on the lunar surface on the 6th. Its target was the Mons Mouton Plateau at the south pole of the moon, "becoming the lunar probe with the closest landing point to the south pole of the moon." The "Space" website said that the Athena probe chose a more direct flight trajectory, launched on February 26, and attempted to land on the lunar surface in less than 10 days. In comparison, the Blue Ghost probe took nearly 50 days, while Japan's "Tenacity" lunar probe took several months.

According to reports, although the Odysseus probe of Intuitive Machines was the first to softly land on the moon, it flipped over during landing due to a malfunction of the laser ranging system. The Athena probe has made a lot of improvements based on it. Trent Martin, the company's senior vice president, said, "We are ready for everything. We hope to land more accurately this time."

According to reports, the Athena probe is similar to the Blue Ghost probe and also carries 10 NASA scientific instruments, but there are significant differences in the research projects. The main scientific mission of the probe is to find water on the moon.

The "Space" website said that there may be a large amount of water ice resources hidden inside the craters and volcanoes in the lunar south pole that never see sunlight all year round, which can be used by future astronauts to stay on the moon for a long time, and even rocket fuel can be extracted from them. To this end, the "Athena" probe is equipped with drilling instruments, which will go deep into the lunar soil to a depth of 1 meter to collect samples and analyze the water sediments and other chemicals in them. At the same time, it also carries a unique "jumping" robot, which will fall into the permanent shadow area of ​​the deep pit on the lunar surface to scan, so as to obtain first-hand information on these areas that may hide water ice. In addition, according to the vision of the US "Artemis" plan, the construction of infrastructure on the moon in the future needs to follow the principle of "lunar in-situ development", and emphasize "using local materials". The "Athena" probe will also collect lunar rock samples to understand the characteristics of lunar rocks.

Japan's "Tenacity" seeks stability

Compared with the American lunar probes that are chasing each other, the flight route design of the "Tenacity" lunar probe of Japan's ispace company seems to be more relaxed. The "Space" website said that Japan's experience in lunar exploration is obviously less, especially as a private aerospace company, ispace cannot compare with its American counterparts in this regard. Therefore, the "Tenacity" probe will continue the flight route of the SLIM probe of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which successfully landed on the moon for the first time in 2024, and rely on the gravity of the earth and the moon to design a series of complex flight routes to achieve acceleration, and finally reach the lunar orbit after a few months. The person in charge of the company said: "We chose a low-energy orbit, but this is not necessarily a bad thing, because multiple systems can be tested during the long journey." After that, ispace will spend about two weeks preparing for landing, and will eventually choose to land in the cold sea area in the northern hemisphere of the moon.

According to reports, "Perseverance" is ispace's second attempt to land on the moon. In 2023, the company's "White Rabbit-R" lander failed in its first attempt to land on the moon. At that time, the probe misjudged the landing altitude, causing it to run out of fuel and crash on the lunar surface. According to the plan, after a successful landing, the "Perseverance" probe will release a miniature lunar rover to collect lunar soil and analyze it. At the same time, the probe is also equipped with a variety of scientific research equipment, such as a water electrolyzer experimental equipment that will try to prove the feasibility of producing oxygen and hydrogen from lunar water resources.

This article is a work supported by the Science Popularization China Creation Cultivation Program

Author: Global Times

Produced by: China Association for Science and Technology Department of Science Popularization

Producer: China Science and Technology Press Co., Ltd., Beijing Zhongke Xinghe Culture Media Co., Ltd.