The new space race revives the epic of the lunar robots half a century later

After a very long 47-year hiatus in its lunar exploration program, Russia is about to return to our satellite. The just-launched probe is number 25 in the historic series of Luna spacecraft, which gave the now-defunct Soviet Union some of its greatest successes in the early years of the space race.

These capsules, which at first were simple metal spheres crowned with antennae and instrument poles, were great milestones in the history of space exploration since 1959. Moon-1 was the first artificial planet; This is how it was called, because it was left in orbit around the Sun when its aim failed by 6,000 kilometers (it had to crash into our satellite). Number 2 was indeed the first artificial impact on the Moon and number 3 obtained the first photographs of the hidden face, which, although they were of poor quality, generated a great stir. Later, Moon-9 soft-landed in 1966, and Moon-10 that same year became the first human artifact to orbit a body other than Earth. The USSR scored all those partial victories, prior to the final victory that was the arrival of the US astronauts in 1969.

By the end of 1968, the Soviet Union had already assumed that the race to the moon would be decided in favor of the Americans. The Soviet manned ship and, above all, the rocket that was to launch it had accumulated too much delay. A final possibility to scratch a bit of prestige would have been to send a pair of cosmonauts to complete the first circumlunar voyage, leaving the moon landing to their American competitors; but the Apollo 8 flight, at Christmas 1968, also dashed those hopes.

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From that disappointment, the official mantra prevailed: deny that the USSR had lost the race simply because it had never intended to participate in it. It would not be until Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost that Moscow would acknowledge the existence of a poorly managed and poorly financed manned lunar program. Despite everything, the USSR had a plan B. A few years ago, the Lavochkin company, which had built the first and simple lunar probes, was developing the next generation, based on a landing platform capable of carrying different types of lunar probes. of load. Among them, an automatic sample collection capsule or a rolling vehicle.

Model of the ‘Luna-1’.Roscosmos

Thanks to Luna-16, launched only a year after the arrival of the Americans, the Soviet Union obtained its first samples of regolith in 1970. Just 100 grams, collected on the shore of the Mare Fecunditatis plain, the left eye of the face that some see in the lunar disk. It was a great technological feat. The capsule with its valuable cargo lifted off from the Moon on a direct vertical ascent trajectory that would direct it toward Earth like a cannonball, with no course corrections. Plunging into the atmosphere (at more than 10 kilometers per second), it experienced a brutal deceleration of 350 G, 50 times more than what astronauts could withstand making the same journey.

Not two months had passed when Luna-17 took off. The landing platform was identical, but this time on it was a curious wheeled vehicle, the first Lunokhod. For some, his gangly appearance and the double television camera that resembled his eyes made him likeable; others simply found it ugly, like a walking bathtub. It consisted of two sections: the chassis, with eight wheels (plus a ninth that served as an odometer) was capable of withstanding the worst treatment; It was not for nothing that its engineers had gained experience designing battle tanks. It lacked a steering system; to turn, he simply accelerated the wheels on one side and braked those on the opposite.

On the chassis there was a watertight compartment, inside which were the scientific equipment, the radio and the batteries. A lid was opened at sunrise, exposing the bank of photoelectric cells, and closed at night to protect it from the cold. Projected for a useful life of three months (three full lunar days), it resisted for almost a year, traveling about 10 kilometers and carrying out hundreds of tests to determine the composition of the soil and its mechanical resistance. Afterwards, it was abandoned for many years until it was detected by a photographic satellite in 2010. The laser reflector he was carrying still works.

Lunokhod 1, wheels and chassis unit of the soviet moon rover being tested for the luna 17 mission, ussr, 1970. (Photo by: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)Sovfoto (Universal Images Group via Getty)

Those two Luna missions, carried out so close in time, constitute one of the great achievements of Soviet astronautics during those heroic years. Others would follow: two to collect samples and another to deposit a second Lunokhod vehicle. This, by the way, traveled 40 kilometers, more than any rover manned by the astronauts of the Apollo program.

About six years ago, the Lavochkin company offered Lunokhod 2 for auction at Sotheby’s. Richard Garriot, a video game designer, paid almost $70,000 for it, knowing that it is parked in Le Monnier crater and can never be brought back to Earth. It is enough for him to know that he owns the only privately owned vehicle on the Moon. There is a third model, more advanced than his two brothers, but in the end it did not fly due to financial problems. Today it is one more piece in the Lávochkin museum, near Moscow.

Other launches by the USSR to the Moon followed in the 1970s. One, orbital, to photograph and analyze the composition of the surface using remote sensors; and two more for sample collection. And the Luna-24, the last in the series, had a two-meter drill bit that made it possible to obtain fragments of deep rock. In total, Russia now has a quarter of a kilo of lunar material.

The new generation

Luna-25 is now an entirely new probe, although it still takes advantage of the original moon landing pad design. Its main objective is to verify the operation of the modern systems that control it, landing in an area of ​​the Aitken depression, near the lunar south pole. There the Sun’s rays arrive so tangentially that they never illuminate the bottom of some craters. In fact, Luna-25 does not have its solar panels on top, but on its sides, to make better use of light. In these dark oases there are deposits of frozen water, as confirmed in 2009 by the first Indian orbital probe, Chandrayaan 2.

The ‘minirovers’ that will map the Moon for NASA.NASA

If all goes well, Luna-25 may be the first vehicle to physically scratch lunar ice. But he is not alone in the race. Since mid-July, another Indian probe has been on its way to the same target, albeit following a much slower trajectory. Previously, the Vikraam, also from the Indian Space Agency (ISRO) crashed in 2019 while trying to land at 70º south latitude.

Other recent attempts to land on the Moon (although not in the polar regions) have not been successful either: the Israeli probe Beresheet in 2019 or the Japanese Hakuto-R lander, which carried a small rover built by the United Arab Emirates. Now, the Japanese space agency (JAXA) is also experimenting with new technologies, from the semi-soft moon landing, using airbags (a first test failed last year) to a horizontal descent, gliding on a skid.

As for NASA, apart from the almost 8,000 million dollars that it has allocated to its Artemis program (divided among consortia led by the companies of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos), it has established contracts with at least four other smaller private companies to develop autonomous landers and rovers. The US plans to send three minirovers in 2024 that will coordinate without direct human intervention to map the lunar surface in 3D, using cameras and ground-penetrating radar. The Moon, and especially its south pole, is going to be very crowded for the next few years.

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