The manned lunar landing drama is about to begin. Who has the ability to "occupy" the moon?

Two things happened recently. One was that NASA Administrator Nelson suddenly said: The Chinese want to occupy the moon! The other was that a few days ago, NASA launched a cube satellite called "CAPSTONE", which was considered to be the first shot to launch the Artemis program, but it suddenly lost contact a few days after the launch.

There was a great uproar in public opinion. The spokesperson of my country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs scoffed at Nelson's statement and refuted it severely. The lost "keystone" was also restored to contact later. So what information and significance do these two events reveal? Let's find out together.

Who wants to occupy the moon?

The topic of occupying the moon was raised on July 3, with NASA Administrator Nelson as the protagonist. In an interview with German newspaper Bild, he suddenly broke the news: "China may land on the moon and say, 'This is ours now, don't come over here.' We should be worried about this." He also claimed that China (space) is indeed good, but this is also because they stole other people's ideas and technologies.

On July 4, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian responded to this statement, saying that it was a disregard of facts and nonsense, and that China firmly opposed it. He emphasized that China's space industry is based on self-reliance and independent research and development, peaceful use of outer space, and opposition to the weaponization of outer space and an arms race. He also criticized the "dark history" of the U.S. space program.

So who wants to occupy the moon? Let's first understand some international policies and regulations regarding the development and utilization of space.

As early as the 1950s, when human space activities had just begun, people paid attention to and discussed the issue of legislation for outer space. The United Nations established the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space in 1959, and successively formulated three declarations, three sets of principles, and five international conventions.

This has formed a series of international laws regulating human space activities, collectively known as space law. In particular, five treaties, namely the Outer Space Treaty, the Rescue Agreement, the Liability Convention, the Registration Convention, and the Moon Agreement, regulate the behavior of countries in space activities in a relatively detailed manner.

The laws and regulations have detailed provisions on space sovereignty, resources, environment, transportation, responsibility, arms control, remote sensing, space stations, etc. For example, Articles 1 and 2 of the Outer Space Treaty stipulate that the exploration and use of outer space is open to all countries in the world and international cooperation is encouraged, including the moon and other celestial bodies, which cannot be claimed by national sovereignty claims, through use and occupation or any other means.

The Moon Agreement further stipulates that it is forbidden to build military bases on the moon, that it can only be used peacefully, and that all countries have equal freedom to conduct scientific research on the moon. It also stipulates that the moon and its natural resources are the common property of all mankind, and no country, organization or individual may claim them for themselves, and can only take samples for scientific research.

Space law is a mandatory international law that binds all organizations and citizens of all countries. Therefore, no country, organization or individual can claim the moon as their own, nor can they set up military bases on the moon or any other extraterrestrial planet. If anyone dares to do so, he or she will become the public enemy of mankind and be punished.

Why did Nelson suddenly speak out? Some people think that his words are a bit anti-intellectual, but Nelson is not a fool. In a sense, he is much smarter than you and me. He knows that neither China nor the United States has the ability to occupy the moon. He said this for a different purpose, which is to put pressure on Congress: in order to maintain the United States' space advantage, more money must be allocated to NASA.

When Chinese people saw Nelson saying this, their faces were very hateful. In fact, sometimes Nelson is not so hateful. When my country's Zhurong rover successfully landed on Mars, he held up the photos sent back by the Zhurong rover to express his congratulations and look forward to more discoveries.

These two faces actually serve one purpose: China's strength cannot be underestimated, and the US government should allocate more money to NASA to maintain the US's leading position in aerospace.

Humans are now landing on the moon or building bases on it mainly for scientific research and space exploration. However, as human technology develops, it is likely that mineral resources on the moon will be developed, such as high-quality nuclear fusion fuel helium-3. At that time, more specific international regulations will be needed to constrain it. Otherwise, if a situation of swarming and the strong prevailing is formed, it will be a tragedy for mankind.

Project Artemis/

Artemis is the goddess of hunting in ancient Greek mythology, so I won't explain her here. The Artemis Project here is a manned lunar landing project funded by the US government. The goal is to send astronauts to the moon and return them safely in 2024, and to build a Deep Space Gate space station in the lunar orbit and a permanent base on the lunar surface to achieve a normalized lunar residence mechanism, in preparation for a manned landing on Mars around 2033.

This project is led by NASA and involves a number of U.S. commercial aerospace companies and international partners, including space agencies from countries and regions such as Europe, Japan, Canada, Italy, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.

Space Policy Directive No. 1, signed by then-US President Trump in 2017, officially approved the Artemis project; on December 10, 2020, then-US Vice President Pence announced a list of 18 astronauts participating in the mission to return to the moon at a meeting held at the Kennedy Space Center, known as the Artemis team.

The plan is divided into two phases. The first phase is from 2019 to 2024. The scientific goal is to achieve a manned landing on the South Pole of the Moon in 2024 through preparatory work such as lunar spacecraft tests and unmanned exploration of the Moon. The second phase is from 2025 to 2030. It will improve the construction of a lunar orbital space station and a lunar base, realize long-term residence on the Moon, and complete a series of scientific investigations and experimental tasks.

The lunar mission vehicle mainly uses the super-heavy launch vehicle developed by NASA to send the new Orion spacecraft into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit. The Orion spacecraft is 2.5 times larger than the Apollo spacecraft used to land on the moon in the last century and can accommodate up to 6 astronauts. The spacecraft integrates the most advanced modern technology in terms of performance, safety, and information processing, which is a great improvement over previous spacecraft, the International Space Station, and the space shuttle.

The lunar launch missions are called Artemis 1, 2, and 3; Mission 1 is an unmanned experimental spacecraft, Mission 2 is a manned circumlunar flight, and Mission 3 is a manned landing at the lunar south pole. In 2020, NASA released a plan outline, which is scheduled to carry out Mission 1 in 2021, Mission 2 in 2023, and Mission 3 in 2024, that is, a manned lunar landing.

But in fact, due to the epidemic and other reasons, Mission 1 was not completed in 2021 and was postponed to this year; as a result, Missions 2 and 3 were also postponed accordingly, and the mission of manned landing on the South Pole of the Moon will not be realized until 2025.

In this huge 11-year mission to return to the moon, in addition to NASA playing the leading role, several private commercial companies were also involved, including Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, Blue Origin, and Aerospace Dynamics Corporation. These companies were allocated budgets to design lunar lander solutions. But in the end, Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, also known as Musk's SpaceX, won the bid and received a 2.9 billion yuan lander construction agreement.

According to reports, Musk's Dragon spacecraft will serve as a cargo bus between the Earth and the lunar space station, while the giant Starship will serve as a lunar module, picking up and transporting people and cargo to and from the lunar surface from the lunar Gateway space station which serves as a transit station. This also means that the Orion spacecraft that carries out the mission of transporting astronauts to the moon no longer needs to carry a lunar module, but can instead transport people and cargo to the Gateway space station floating in lunar orbit.

Compared with the moon landing in the last century, this is a huge change, which will make human moon landing more relaxed and safer. If this is true, the lunar space station named "Deep Space Gate" needs to be built in advance. According to NASA, the construction of Deep Space Gate will start in 2023 and be completed in 2026.

This is a "space hotel" that is smaller than the International Space Station. It consists of four modules: propulsion, accommodation, cargo logistics, and extravehicular activities. This will be the first "space hotel" for humans to colonize. Whether it is landing on the moon or flying to Mars in the future, this portal will serve as a relay station or springboard. People on long voyages will first transfer here and then fly to distant places.

However, this does not seem to be suitable for Musk's giant starship that can transport 100 people to Mars at a time. This small hotel can only accommodate 6 people.

The Deep Space Gate space station continues the cooperation model of the International Space Station, which is still led by the United States and participated by 16 countries, including Russia, Japan, Canada, Brazil and 11 European Space Agency member states. However, due to the severe sanctions imposed on Russia by European and American countries, it is still unknown whether Russia has been kicked out of this circle of friends.

There are still many details to be solved in the Artemis program, including the design and manufacture of extravehicular activity devices and space suits, which are also being promoted simultaneously. It was said that the design and manufacture of space suits delayed the construction period a while ago, which was also one of the reasons for the delay of the moon landing plan. So, whether the plan to return to the moon by 2025 can be realized as scheduled remains to be seen.

The "Keystone" CubeSat suddenly lost contact, almost causing the Artemis program to fail in its first launch.

The CAPSTONE CubeSat, translated as "capstone" or "archstone", is a tiny probe launched by NASA on June 28. It is only the size of a microwave oven and weighs 25 kilograms. Although it is small, it is very important. There are at least three points worth noting about this launch.

First, this is the first probe to the moon launched by humans since my country's Chang'e-5 landed on the moon and brought back 1.7 kilograms of lunar soil. Second, this probe used photon engine propulsion technology for the first time, which will have a profound impact on future aerospace propulsion technology. Third, this launch is considered to be the first mission of the Artemis program and has attracted much attention.

It can be said that the Archstone CubeSat is the first small spacecraft launched by the Artemis program, and it can be said to be the first shot in the manned return to the moon. Although it is small in size, its mission is very important. It is mainly to test the lunar orbit of the lunar landing mission, that is, to explore and navigate the orbit of the lunar gateway space station. The future lunar space station will operate on this orbit.

The small CubeSat was launched on Rocket Lab's Electron rocket on June 28 and orbited the Earth for nearly a week, gradually increasing its speed and increasing its orbital altitude by intermittently starting its Photon engine. When the Photon engine was ignited for the last time, Archstone gained the power to leave Earth orbit and enter the Earth-Moon transfer channel.

Photon rockets are propelled by photon engines that use Einstein's theory of relativity and the mass-energy equation and rely on the directional flow of electromagnetic radiation quanta (photons) to generate thrust. Theoretically, deep space voyages can eventually push the speed of the rocket to close to the speed of light. This has only been in theory and experiment, but this time NASA has already put it into actual use in space.

Of course, the energy of the photon engine this time is very small, the propulsion time is also very short, and the speed is not very high. But this is the beginning of an unlimited technology and has a pioneering milestone significance for future interstellar voyages.

After leaving Earth, Archstone will follow a long, circuitous route to the Moon, and will be ejected as far as 1.3 million kilometers outside the Earth-Moon system before being pulled back by gravity. After a four-month journey, it will slide into the Moon's "Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit" on November 13. This is a highly elliptical orbit around the Moon, with a perigee of about 3,400 kilometers and an apogee of 76,000 kilometers, with an orbital period of 7 days.

This is a high-inclination and high-angle orbit around the moon, which is the orbit of the lunar gateway space station that will be built soon. Most of the arc segments of the orbital cycle are visible to the lunar north and south poles, which is convenient for relay communication services there. The lunar south pole is rich in water ice and is the key landing and exploration site of the Artemis program. In the future, the lunar base may also be built there.

Everything seemed to be going well, but soon after Archstone left Earth orbit and entered the Earth-Moon transfer mission, it suddenly lost contact with the global deep space network and no news came out. As a result, not only NASA was anxious, but also the media around the world, whether they cared about Archstone's life or not, started to hype it up.

For a moment, there were people who were worried, sneered, and gloated over the misfortune. For NASA, this failure was not a good omen. It might delay the moon landing process, or give domestic opponents an excuse, and even affect Congress's subsequent funding.

On July 5, NASA spokesperson Sarah Fraser released a statement:

"After successful deployment and commissioning on July 4, the CAPSTONE satellite experienced communication issues while engaging with the Deep Space Network, and the project team is working to identify the cause and re-establish communications."

Fortunately, after more than twenty hours of anxious torment, at 9:26 am on July 6, the gadget finally reestablished contact with the Deep Space Network, and the ground began to receive telemetry data from the satellite one hour later.

According to the investigation results released by NASA, the operating team sent a diagnostic command to Archstone after discovering the abnormality in the distance measurement data. However, the format of the command was incorrect, which caused the radio equipment to shut down. Therefore, it seems that the problem was not with Archstone itself, but with the command it sent.

But later, the self-check system of "Archstone" should have automatically restarted the radio, but due to a software malfunction, it did not complete the restart in time. Fortunately, the autonomous flight software eventually cleared the fault and restarted the communication module, and then restored communication with the ground. The data received showed that during the period of loss of contact, "Archstone" was in good condition and operated safely and faithfully on the established route.

The latest situation is that the "Archstone" attitude is stable, the solar panels have been successfully deployed, the onboard batteries have been charged, and the propulsion system is ready for the next maneuver. At the same time, the "Archstone" is also in contact with the Spanish ground station of the voice control network and the "Golden Stone" ground station in California, allowing operators to determine and master its position and speed.

It seems that everything is back on track, and we are just waiting for the moon landing drama to be staged. So, when will my country's manned moon landing plan be launched? It is worth looking forward to. In short, human exploration of space and interstellar, no matter which country makes it, is ultimately for the better survival and development of mankind, and we should all be happy to see it happen. What do you think? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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