Mikhail Kotov — about the latest changes in the manned lunar programs of the USA and China
It seems that quite recently, China and the United States alternately announced plans for manned missions landing on the surface of the Moon. However, almost five years have passed since the start of the lunar race. And if at that time it seemed that the American program, the implementation of which was announced by 2024, was far ahead of the Chinese one, originally designed for 2030, today there is a completely different impression. While the American Artemis III is "storming", the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (CLEP) stubbornly goes to its goal.
With shifting deadlines
At the time of the announcement of the launch of the Artemis manned program in 2019 The United States had a serious advantage over other countries. The development of the Space Launch System (SLS) launch vehicle was at the final stage, the Orion spacecraft was also almost ready, so it was believed that a manned flight of American astronauts with a landing on the Moon was quite real by 2024, which was announced by US representatives. There were still five years ahead, and the main tasks were to develop and create a lander and spacesuits to work on the surface of a natural satellite of the Earth.
But after more than four years, the situation has not changed much. Unless in November 2022, the SLS rocket with the Orion spacecraft confirmed the declared characteristics during a test flight. However, in April of this year, the head of the American space agency, Bill Nelson, said that NASA expects to land two astronauts on the Moon only at the end of 2025 or early 2026.
The fact is that the American agency chose a solution from SpaceX as a landing module — the contract for the development, production and demonstration of the Starship Human Landing System was signed in April 2021. It was assumed that the lander would be made from the second stage of the superheavy Starship space system. To do this, they will add special landing engines, enlarged supports and a system for astronauts to access the surface from a 50-meter height.
According to early plans, Starship HLS will have to make the first unmanned landing on the lunar surface in 2024. However, many experts already agree that the development is late. To date, even the basis of the future lander — Starship itself — has not made a single orbital flight. But we still need to assemble a lunar version in hardware, test refueling in space, conduct a test lunar flight, test landing systems, etc.
Among other things, on April 20, 2023, an attempt was made to launch Starship, which, according to SpaceX, ended with a "partial success" — after detaching from the launch pad and reaching an altitude of 39 km, the rocket entered an uncontrolled rotation and was blown up on command from the Ground. The next test will not take place until the end of summer.
Now NASA, apparently, is puzzled by a safety net in case of problems with Starship HLS. On May 20, the American space agency signed a contract with Blue Origin ($ 3.4 billion) to develop a landing module to the Moon as part of the Artemis program — NASA explains this step by "increasing reliability". "We are pleased to announce that Blue Origin will create a human landing system as NASA's second supplier to deliver Artemis astronauts to the surface of the moon," said Bill Nelson, head of the space agency.
Next, the general public became aware of problems with the engines for the SLS launch vehicle. It was planned to use RS-25 engines on the first stage of the rocket — a legacy from the Space Shuttle program, which should have saved significant funds. However, a recent audit showed that the idea could not be implemented.
It turned out that with the refinement of the RS-25 engines for use in the SLS rocket, there are a considerable number of problems, for example, in the part of the solid-fuel accelerator. Since the start of the work, the cost has increased from $2.5 billion to $4.4 billion, which is also quite capable of influencing the final terms of the entire program. Only 5 of the 16 required engine improvements have been completed to date.
They stand on their own
Less is traditionally known about the Chinese program. However, all the news coming from the Middle Kingdom indicates the continuation of active work on the project. At the same time, as in 2018, the flight period was planned for 2030 (as experts at various levels have repeatedly talked about at specialized conferences), so five years later nothing has changed. On the contrary, the relevance of the plans for the landing of Taikonauts on the Moon was confirmed by the Office of the Manned Space Flight Program of the People's Republic of China (CMSA). "According to the plan of the manned lunar exploration project, the Chinese will land on the Moon for the first time until 2030, during this mission two astronauts will operate a manned lunar rover to conduct research," the message published in the department's account on the WeChat social network clarifies.
Two days later, this information was confirmed at a press conference at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China by Lin Xiqiang, Deputy director of the Chinese Manned Space Agency. "The overall goals of the program are to carry out the first human landing on the Moon in China by 2030, to conduct scientific research and demonstrations of relevant technologies on the lunar surface, to develop a system of movement and short—term stay of crews, as well as to develop comprehensive human and robot tests and other key technologies," he said. "Our astronauts will go to the moon, collect samples around the landing site and do some on-site research. This will mark the beginning of our manned flights from low—Earth orbit to deep space and will help deepen humanity's knowledge about the origin and evolution of the Moon and the Solar System," Lin Xiqiang added.
However, it is too early to speak categorically about the change of the race leaders. Now, rather, China has begun to slowly reduce the advantage of the United States, which seemed so indisputable five years ago. China's capabilities will become clearer when the tests of the Changzheng 10 superheavy rocket (CZ-10, Changzheng-10), created specifically for manned lunar missions, begin.
In the meantime, we can only hope that in the coming years we will see firsthand the flight of people to the moon.
