Anatoly Petrukovich, head of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in an interview that China and the United States are currently competing to be the first to land on the moon. Until 2030, according to him, our country faces "the main task — to catch up."
The scientist stated that the second "moon race" actually exists, of course" (five years ago Naked Science already wrote about its beginning). In his opinion, now it does not have the character of an ideological confrontation. Today, rather, there is a struggle for more practical goals. Whoever lands people on the moon first and creates bases there will be able to stake out much more profitable bases than the second one.
In addition, Petrukovich divided the race into two components: automated and manned missions. In the first, he gave a clear advantage to China, which has conducted several successful landings there in a row over the past dozen years. Attempts by other countries to do the same ended in the same way: their vehicles either crashed or landed gently, but turned over after landing. The only exceptions were one Indian and one American lander.
The next stage, with the landing of people, already has two favorites, the USA and China. "So far, we see that although the Americans are formally closer to the goal, but I personally have this feeling.: they may be delayed, but the Chinese will make it earlier," the academician noted. Previously, Naked Science analyzed in a separate article why the chances of the United States landing people there first in the 2020s are higher than those of the Chinese.
Among the strategic goals of the moon race, Petrukovich identified the occupation of the most advantageous locations for lunar bases. He recalled that in the circumpolar zones of the Moon, there are much smaller temperature differences in day-night cycles, and there are water deposits. All these are very valuable qualities for points where you can create large bases.
But there are also significant difficulties: there are many mountains near the poles and few large flat areas where many landings could be carried out. In lunar conditions, too close landings of different vehicles at the same point lead to heavy dusting of those who landed earlier by those who landed later. Such pollution by lunar dust, according to the experience of the 1960s, can block the operation of both solar panels and the heat sink system, which threatens the operability of the devices.
The director of the IKI mentioned that the Americans propose to make the landing sites of certain countries a "no-go zone" for other participants in the lunar race, so that new landings do not pose threats to the technology of the pioneer country. "Therefore, de facto restrictions may appear, some bans on certain zones, and this, of course, is very annoying for everyone," Petrukovich concluded.
Regarding Russia's place in the unfolding race, he acknowledged: "Unfortunately, the first round is not for us." Together with Israel and Japan, we became one of those countries whose spacecraft did not successfully land on the Moon, although they tried (Luna-25). But, Petrukovich noted, conclusions have been drawn from these mistakes and improvements have been proposed. In 2029-2030, our country plans to launch two landers to the circumpolar regions of the Moon.
The head of the IKI RAS believes that at the moment Russia's lag in the lunar race is "not so dramatic yet." However, "it is necessary to fulfill plans ... for successful landings on the Moon in the period 2028-30 in order to resolve our issues." Such "targeted" landings should pave the way for the formation of lunar bases in 2030-2035. To make this possible, Petrukovich designated "catching up" as the main task for our lunar program until 2030. Apparently, we are talking about a lag in the field of automatic landings, since Russia does not have any specific plans for the Moon in the field of manned space exploration.
Naked Science previously wrote about why research on other celestial bodies by automata is lagging behind in terms of performance and will seriously lag behind manned ones for the foreseeable future. In addition, we talked about new scientific theories of the Moon's formation, which imply the possibility of not only a kilometer-long layer of permafrost at the poles, but also subglacial lenses of liquid water, where the simplest life is possible.
