Tag Archive for: cislunar space

India explores the next space frontier

History was made this week when India made the first-ever landing on the moon’s south pole.

A 26-kilogram rover called Pragyan (‘wisdom’) arrived in lunar orbit aboard India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and was carried to the surface on its Vikram lander. This makes India the fourth nation to land on the lunar surface after the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. An attempt by Russia to land its Luna 25 probe in the same region earlier in the week failed when the spacecraft lost communications with earth and crashed onto the moon.

The global politics of this are important. India has succeeded where Russia has failed, and the benefit of India’s participation in international space cooperation cannot be ignored, in contrast to Russia’s growing isolation due to its war on Ukraine. Russia has signed an agreement with China to establish the proposed international lunar research station at the moon’s south pole. But if Moscow can’t deliver payloads, its reliability in supporting Beijing’s ambitions on and around the moon becomes questionable.

For India, this triumph as a rising space power also reinforces the importance of international space cooperation. The success of Chandrayaan-3 has demonstrated India’s technological prowess. It has established the basis for future missions, including additional Chandrayaan probes to the moon and eventually Indian astronauts landing there. India has signed the US Artemis Accords, and NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation have agreed on a joint US–Indian mission to the International Space Station in 2024.

Other states are poised to follow in India’s footsteps. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency is set to launch SLIM, its ‘smart lander for investigating moon’, on 27 August to demonstrate high-precision landing techniques using small, lightweight probes. Australia remains on course to send the ‘G’day Moon’ rover developed by the AROSE consortium, which comprises Australian companies Fugro and Nova Systems. There are also plans to deploy a constellation of satellites into lunar orbit with the Seven Sisters initiative by Fleet Space Technologies.

The importance of the moon—and, more broadly, cislunar space (the region between earth orbit and the moon)—cannot be overstated in terms of opening up the high frontier for human activities. A key mission of Chandrayaan-3 is to hunt for water-ice in the lunar soil by analysing the chemical and mineral composition of the surface around the lander.  Although it won’t give a definitive assessment of the amount of water-ice at the lunar south pole, confirming the substance’s presence will be crucial. Follow-on missions by India, and others, will be needed to determine the quantity and accessibility of such water.

If the water volume is significant and accessible, it could be extracted and processed into oxygen to support a permanent human presence on lunar bases. Hydrogen and oxygen could also be used for rocket fuel for travel deeper into the solar system.

Being able to use lunar resources to ‘live off the land’ would fundamentally change the economics and business case for human exploration of the moon and would significantly lower the cost of sustaining a permanent human presence there compared to the short visits during the Apollo program.

In turn, a permanent human presence on the lunar surface, particularly in the south polar region, could use the water-ice and uninterrupted solar energy for resource exploitation. Mining the moon for precision metals could open up the possibility of space-based manufacturing, on the surface and in cislunar space, which would establish the basis of a space-based economy.

Currently, launch vehicles taking payloads into orbit from earth use a great deal of energy to climb out of the earth’s deep gravity well at considerable financial cost. The much-reduced gravity on the moon—one-sixth that of earth—offers dramatic advantages for space launches.

That cost–energy advantage is enhanced further if spacecraft can also exploit lunar ice processed into rocket fuel, and if space resources can be used in manufacturing on the moon.

That could extend even to manufacturing spacecraft. The moon could become a launch site for spacecraft operating between cislunar space and earth orbit and is a natural stepping-stone for deep-space exploration to Mars and beyond. In this way, human activity in space would become moon-centric and embrace an entirely new business model for space exploration. Add in the low-cost reusable launch capabilities that could operate either from earth or the moon, and space exploration costs fall away considerably.

With such a dramatic reduction in cost, it becomes practical to consider much more ambitious space activities, including the construction of large structures such as solar power satellites that could help address the earth’s looming challenge with climate change. This will be a long journey, but Chandrayaan-3 has made a bold step towards a golden age in space exploration for humanity.

Armstrong on the moon: one small step to an exciting future in space

Fifty-four years ago today, American astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, famously declaring: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’ Humanity’s first visit to another world shaped expectations for our future in space. Between July 1969 and December 1972, the Apollo program put 12 astronauts on the lunar surface, before it was abruptly cancelled.

Apollo’s success ensured that space exploration continued—with robotic probes to the planets, humans establishing a permanent presence in low-earth orbit (LEO) aboard US space shuttle missions from 1981 to 2011, and the construction of the International Space Station.

Finally, men and women are now planning to return to the moon. NASA is set to fly four astronauts around the moon on Artemis II in 2024 and then land on the lunar surface as early as 2025 on Artemis III. Further Artemis missions are planned that will eventually lead to a permanent human presence there.

China too, isn’t sitting still, and has brought forward its proposed landing from 2034 to ‘by 2030’. If NASA’s plans are delayed due to uncertainty over the agency’s budget, Chinese taikonauts could be the next to walk on the lunar surface.

The focus of the next phase of exploration is resource utilisation, particularly at the lunar south pole. This would demand a permanent presence on the surface and around the moon in ‘cislunar space’, an area that is of key interest to the United States. The US cislunar science and technology strategy argues that it’s a new sphere of human activity, a gateway to the rest of the solar system and a valuable location for science and technology development among partners.

The main goal for NASA and its partners, adhering to the Artemis Accords, is to develop the technologies and skills to take astronauts to Mars, perhaps by the late 2030s or early 2040s, and to learn how to use space resources to develop space-based manufacturing and establish a space economy. China, in collaboration with Russia under their proposed international lunar research facility, will also undertake exploration and exploitation of lunar resources. Beijing seeks a Chinese-dominated cislunar space economy that would see the moon and the area around it become a new high domain for astrostrategic power.

In time, both sides could be poised to use lunar resources to develop space-based solar power satellites that could one day dramatically ease humanity’s energy challenges and help mitigate climate-change risks. China is already making progress in this area.

There are clear benefits in establishing a presence around and on the moon—but also real potential for competition for control of lunar resources, despite legal constraints on claiming territory under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. There’s discussion in space policy circles about the potential military relevance of cislunar space and the capabilities and presence that may be needed there to protect future orbits and trajectories from interference, especially as the human presence on and around the moon grows. Space policy analyst Peter Garretson argues: ‘What is driving the US military to look at cislunar … is fear that China’s moves to cislunar will provide it with a positional and logistic advantage from which it could occupy, constrict, threaten or coerce US interests.’ Although the focus of military space remains firmly within what Bleddyn Bowen refers to as the ‘cosmic coastline’—the region between LEO and GEO (geosynchronous equatorial orbit) relevant to the use of force on earth—it’s conceivable that in coming decades a ‘blue water’ perception of space power focused in cislunar space may gain support.

This is far from the original vision of Apollo, summarised on the plaque left at Tranquility Base by Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, which suggested that US astronauts ‘came in peace for all mankind’. The space competition emerging between China and the US is not a space race—which implies a finish line; it is more open-ended and broad-based. Rather than just getting back to the moon first, the goal is to establish an astrostrategic advantage over the long term.

A dimension that didn’t exist in the Apollo era is commercial space. The opportunity for companies and other private actors to play an ever-expanding role in earth orbit and beyond to the moon—and then beyond that to the wider solar system—is real and significant. By 2040 the global commercial space sector is expected to be worth more than US$1 trillion. Commercial companies will be not only launching satellites but also directly supporting humanity’s presence on and around the moon and establishing commercial LEO platforms for manufacturing that use resources extracted from the moon. It’s a safe bet that solar power satellites will be built from lunar resources and operated by commercial companies. Australia already contributes to this important field. Reusable rocket technologies such as those of SpaceX and, in the coming decades, hypersonic spaceplane technology like that being developed by Australian company Hypersonix, will make getting into space and using that domain much cheaper. The lower the cost to get there, the easier it will be to exploit space for ambitious projects such as solar power.

Both NASA’s Artemis plans and the commercial space sector are hugely important for Australia. This nation provided important support to the Apollo missions. Armstrong’s famous message was received at the space communications facility at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra before the signal was transferred to ‘the Dish’ at Parkes in New South Wales. Humanity would have missed that historic moment without Australia’s involvement.

Australia is still contributing to space exploration by the US and its partners, including for the planned Artemis missions to the moon in the 2020s and 2030s under the Australian Space Agency’s ‘Moon to Mars initiative’. Our commercial space sector is vibrant and growing and is poised to make its own giant leap, perhaps within the next two years, to being able to launch Australian satellites on Australian rockets from Australian launch sites, through the development of launch vehicles by companies such as Gilmour Space Technologies. Such an achievement would have been inconceivable even 10 years ago. Australia’s commercial space sector has made incredible progress under the guidance of the Australian Space Agency, established in 2018. It’s important that this momentum is maintained if Australia is to continue to be a credible actor in a transformed global space sector. Recent decisions on space are a cause for concern.

When Armstrong stood on the moon, he gazed back at the earth, a beautiful blue planet and home to all humans who had ever lived. It was indeed humanity’s first giant leap towards becoming a spacefaring civilisation, and a step along a path that one day will take us to Mars and beyond—and that might ultimately ensure our survival as a species. If we have the right determination, future steps may be taken by an Australian astronaut on the lunar surface.