The US moon landing plan has been postponed one after another. Why is it so difficult to return to the moon?

The failure of the Peregrine mission means that the US's return to the moon plan has been temporarily blocked and the overall plan has been delayed. Unlike the Apollo program, this moon landing plan will mainly rely on commercial forces to achieve the moon landing, and US official agencies will play the role of contractors. This setback highlights the potential risks of betting all the return plans on commercial companies.

Written by | Lee Hyun-hwan

The U.S. moon landing plan failed to get off to a good start in 2024. On January 8, local time, the Peregrine lander, which carries the U.S.'s vision of returning to the moon, had a propellant leak shortly after it was launched into space, and it has been determined that it will not be able to reach the moon. This spacecraft, which cost $108 million and carries several scientific detection instruments and human ashes, will eventually fall into the Earth's atmosphere.

This is also the first time that a private American company has attempted to land on the moon - the developer of the Peregrine is Astrobotic. After restarting the moon landing plan, the US government funded the dismantling of the tasks at each stage and handed them over to various commercial aerospace companies to undertake, relying on commercial forces to achieve the moon landing.

As the United States' first attempt at a soft landing on the moon in 50 years - three astronauts left the moon in the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972 - the failure of the Peregrine mission meant that the United States' plan to return to the moon was temporarily blocked, and the progress of the interconnected moon landing plan was also delayed.

The moment of rocket launch. Source: ULA

This setback also highlights the potential risks of placing all bets on commercial companies for the return plan. In this article, we will start with the Peregrine mission and deeply analyze the similarities and differences between the United States' moon landing plan more than half a century later and the Apollo program, as well as the new advantages and uncertainties brought by the new model when commercial forces are tied to national missions.

Moon landing plan supported by private companies

The moon landing narrative supported by commercial forces began six years ago.

In December 2017, then-US President Trump signed a space policy directive in the White House, announcing that American astronauts would return to the moon and eventually go to Mars.

NASA named the new moon landing program Artemis, which comes from the moon goddess and hunting symbol in Greek mythology. This name echoes the previous generation of American lunar exploration project Apollo Project - in Greek mythology, Artemis is Apollo's twin sister.

Unlike the Apollo program, the purpose of this moon landing is far more than just leaving footprints and planting a flag on the lunar surface. The end point of the Artemis program is not the moon, but starting from the moon to go to more distant planets; more importantly, in terms of the path to achieve it, NASA is no longer an agency that takes care of the entire process, but as a government contractor, it puts forward various requirements and selects contractors from a number of commercial companies and university laboratories. Therefore, for commercial aerospace companies, NASA is just one of many customers, and they can even transport other commercial goods during the mission.

Phase 1 of the Artemis program. Source: NASA

As a small part of the larger project, NASA initially selected nine companies through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to compete for multi-billion dollar contracts. NASA pays private companies to deliver scientific instruments to the lunar surface and conduct exploration. If the plan is successful, NASA will outsource future manned lunar missions to private companies — like a more complex interstellar delivery service.

This launch is the first mission in the CLPS program. According to the plan, there are at least nine subsequent lunar landing missions, which will send different equipment from five companies to the lunar surface. In fact, from rockets to spacecraft to lunar landers, NASA has established cooperation with 13 American aerospace companies, and the number of upstream suppliers behind them exceeds 3,000.

The recent U.S. lunar launch missions have served as training grounds and reliability tests for each company.

Although the Peregrine failed to complete its mission, the launch phase was the first test flight of the new rocket "Vulcan" designed by the United Launch Alliance (ULA). This rocket, developed by a joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing, was also about to obtain certification from the Department of Defense through this launch.

Peregrine lunar lander.

Another star aerospace company, Blue Origin, founded by Bezos, also participated in the mission. The Vulcan rocket is equipped with two BE-4 rocket engines developed by Blue Origin. This type of engine has been developed for many years and this is the first time to carry out a formal flight mission. Blue Origin also plans to test the "New Glenn" rocket equipped with multiple BE-4 engines for the first time this year.

Vulcan on the launch pad. Source: ULA

Subsequent missions are also very intensive. Another company called Intuitive Machines has planned to launch its own lunar lander for the first time in mid-February, when the mission launch phase will use SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Interestingly, Intuitive Machines plans to land on the moon on or before February 22 (one day earlier than the original landing date of the Peregrine Falcon). If it can be achieved, it will become the first commercial company to land on the moon.

Preparations are also underway for the next phase of the lunar mission: a manned flight around the moon. Four astronauts from the United States and Canada are already ready, but the Orion spacecraft they will be riding on (co-developed by Lockheed Martin and Airbus) has not yet been fully tested, and the flight plan has been postponed from 2024 to 2025.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is still testing its Starship rocket and spacecraft, the first fully reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle in history, which has yet to complete an orbital launch, and NASA has planned to use it to carry out the first two official human moon landing missions.

The repeated delays of the Artemis program and the failure of this mission highlight the new difficulties facing the country that once landed on the moon.

What’s different about America’s moon landing program after half a century?

The failure of the Peregrine mission will inevitably affect the interlocking lunar landing plans, which leads to an intuitive question: Why did the United States land on the moon in one fell swoop more than half a century ago, but never return? Even the new round of plans will face so many difficulties and uncertainties.

In theory, there is no big technical problem in recreating the Saturn V rocket and Apollo space capsule from the Apollo program. But the United States does not want to repeat the Apollo program. The Apollo program sent humans to the surface of the moon and promoted large-scale technological innovation, including computer technology, communication technology, and material science. In the Artemis program, the moon is just a transit station, and it is simply not feasible to fully copy the Apollo program.

The Saturn V was launched. Source: Wikipedia

First of all, their goals are different.

The Apollo lunar landing area was mainly located near the equator of the lunar surface, and later this area was also called the "Apollo lunar landing area." Specifically, the six lunar landing missions in the Apollo program were all located near or close to the equator of the moon. This choice ensures that solar cells can provide sufficient energy supply under various lighting conditions.

One of the main goals of the Artemis program is to establish a sustainable human base on the moon, and even use it as a transit station to go to deeper space. Therefore, the new lunar mission has set its sights on the South Pole of the moon. The South Pole is considered to be the area on the moon where water ice is most likely to exist. Whether for human habitation or future deep space exploration, lunar water resources are crucial for providing drinking water and fuel (decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen). For this reason, NASA plans to send an ice drilling rover to the moon as early as the second half of this year, and one of the subsequent human astronaut lunar missions is also to search for water resources.

Apollo 11 mission. Credit: NASA

More important factors are economic costs and security risks.

The Apollo program was born during the US-Soviet arms race. It was first proposed in 1960, but was not approved at the beginning. It was not until April of the following year that Soviet astronaut Gagarin successfully entered space on the Vostok 1 spacecraft, becoming the world's first astronaut. Inspired by this, then-US President Kennedy officially announced the Apollo program a month later.

The Apollo lunar mission was full of huge risks, more like a "gamble" in the race to the moon. Between 1968 and 1972, NASA conducted a total of 9 manned lunar missions, 6 of which successfully landed, and 12 astronauts successfully landed on the lunar surface.

Behind success are a series of fatal risks and accidents. For example, the famous "Apollo 1" accident occurred during the ground test phase, and a sudden fire killed three astronauts; in the "Apollo 11" mission, although Armstrong successfully set foot on the moon, he encountered an ignition switch failure when returning to Earth; in addition, Apollo 12, 13, 15 and other missions also experienced major accidents.

In addition to the safety cost, the Apollo program also had a huge cost that was unmatched by other projects. The total cost of the program reached 25.5 billion US dollars, equivalent to 0.57% of the US GDP at that time, accounting for 20% of the overall US scientific research and development funds at that time. This cost has exceeded 150 billion US dollars in recent years.

Today's NASA no longer has unlimited funding and full support like the Apollo program; nor can it tolerate high risks. They must clearly assess the risks of each project. For example, NASA will calculate the exact failure rate of each component and assess the risks involved in the failure of each component, subcomponent, and system.

The Artemis program, which was born against this background, is seen as a sustainable project: it can reach the moon at a more economical cost, with more advanced technology and in a safer way.

According to the US audit department, NASA will invest $93 billion in the development of various projects required for the lunar mission by 2025. However, if a series of missions cannot be completed on time, subsequent costs will rise further.

Although the Artemis program currently does not have an order of magnitude advantage in terms of cost and R&D cycle, the introduction of a commercial competition model will bring huge opportunities for improvement. Compared with the Apollo program, which was almost impossible to reduce costs, the Artemis program is more reliable in terms of technological innovation and reuse. The longer the project lasts, the lower the cost will be. The participation of "catfish" such as SpaceX and Blue Origin may enable NASA to achieve the ultimate goal of this adventure while significantly saving costs: first go to the moon, then to Mars.

Schematic diagram of establishing a human settlement on the moon. Source: NASA

The risks of commercial moon landing are gradually revealed

NASA relies on commercial forces to advance space projects, and it sees the disruptive effects brought about by the full flexibility and capital utilization efficiency of private companies, just as SpaceX has significantly reduced the cost of rocket and satellite manufacturing. Before achieving this goal, the iteration of technology and the reduction of costs are also based on failure and trial and error, just as SpaceX also improved the reliability of spacecraft in the early days through successive failures.

Moreover, moon landing has always been a mission with a high failure rate. In fact, before Peregrine, all moon landing missions carried out by private companies ended in failure. In April 2019, the lunar lander Beresheet, jointly built by the private company SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, lost contact and crashed during its attempt to land on the moon; in April 2023, the lunar lander of Japanese commercial aerospace company ispace also lost contact during a soft landing attempt and eventually crashed.

Private companies are more focused on cost control, and under such circumstances, the risk of failure will become greater, and more missions will end in failure in the future. Nico Dettmann, head of the European Space Agency's lunar exploration team, commented on the Peregrine mission that these companies are relatively new, and failure is understandable. Companies will learn from failure and eventually achieve cost reduction. But it is undeniable that the first few missions may fail.

It can be seen that efficiency, cost and reliability have become three elements that cannot be achieved simultaneously in the US moon landing plan. NASA, which is trying to rely on commercial forces, is also accepting the disadvantages of continuous delays in the plan.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said at a recent press conference that the Artemis 2 mission, which was originally planned to send four astronauts around the moon by the end of 2024, has been postponed to September 2025; and the Artemis 3 mission to send astronauts to the surface of the moon will also be postponed for one year, from 2025 at the earliest to September 2026.

Rendering of the lunar lander. Source: NASA

This highlights the risk of NASA's strategy of relying on private companies: the moon landing schedule is getting out of control. When tasks are assigned to different companies, the progress is more difficult for NASA to control, and the engineering tasks themselves have a certain probability of failure, so every mission failure or delay in progress will affect the entire plan. And when there are dozens of companies involved, accidents are inevitable.

For example, according to the plan, the Peregrine Falcon is not the first spacecraft to go to the moon. Previously, a commercial aerospace company called Masten Space Systems won a contract from NASA to develop a lunar lander for the latter, which is scheduled to be launched in November 2023.

However, NASA's funding did not allow the company to survive until the planned time. The company filed for bankruptcy in the second half of 2022, and its main assets were later acquired by Astrobotic. This also directly led to the cancellation of the original launch mission. In this "Peregrine Falcon" launch mission, there were originally five other payloads that were to go to the moon with it, but in the lander adjustment before launch, the payloads were placed in the subsequent lunar landing mission.

For the US moon landing program, the extremely long time period itself is also a risk.

Every year, the U.S. Congress passes the annual appropriations bill to determine NASA's specific budget amount, so one of the most important tasks of the NASA administrator is to convince the president and Congress to pay more attention to space missions and approve more money. Therefore, the support of Congress and the incumbent president for NASA is crucial.

Before the Artemis program, then-President Obama preferred to focus on Mars, that is, to send human astronauts directly to Mars without going to the moon. The successor Trump administration supported the existing plan and successfully established the Artemis program.

Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator during the Trump administration (nominated by Trump), once said that NASA accelerated the progress of the moon landing plan in order to prevent politicians from suddenly changing their minds one day and causing the plan to be aborted. They even moved up the moon landing time from the original 2028 to 2024. This time point is also quite delicate: if Trump wins the 2020 election, the moon landing plan can be completed on time during the last year of his term.

But the plan did not come to fruition. On the one hand, the progress of the Artemis program was delayed one after another, and on the other hand, Trump failed to be re-elected. Biden entered the White House in 2020 and Jim Bridenstine resigned immediately. Fortunately, the Biden administration continued to support the Artemis program, and NASA's budget has continued to grow in recent years, but under such a mechanism, long-term uncertainty will be difficult to eliminate.

Anxiety has also increased. Compared with the uncertainty in the plan, the external competitive pressure is certain and has never decreased. A new round of moon landing competition has begun globally. In addition to non-traditional space powers represented by Japan, Israel and India, which have already launched attempts to the moon, Russia has also made efforts to demonstrate its strength in the field of moon landing. More importantly, China's moon landing plan is still advancing steadily.

As the only country that has ever sent humans to the moon, how will the United States, which has restarted the moon landing, shake off the historical burden and demonstrate its moon landing strength in the commercial space era? The aerospace industry is still looking forward to new surprises.

Reference Links

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-04064-5

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/12/why-landing-on-the-moon-is-proving-more-difficult-today-than-50-years-ago

[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/07/moon-landing-2024-nasa-astrobotic-intuitive-machines/

[4] https://www.reuters.com/science/moon-race-with-china-us-setbacks-test-role-private-firms-2024-01-12/

[5] https://www.wsj.com/science/space-astronomy/nasa-moon-landings-2024-9103f9ad?mod=WTRN_pos1&cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_160&cx_artPos=0

This article is supported by the Science Popularization China Starry Sky Project

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.

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