Here come the Moon landing missions (probably)

As anyone who has been paying attention to space exploration knows, the Moon is red-hot. Up to half a dozen missions may launch to the lunar surface in the next six months, heralding a new era of Moon exploration.

It has not always been so. Following the Space Race in the 1960s and early 1970s, NASA and the Soviet Union backed off their Moon exploration programs. NASA sent probes to the far-flung corners of the Solar System, and the US space agency and Russian space program focused their human activities in low-Earth orbit, constructing and inhabiting a series of space stations.

There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.

A second factor has been the rise of China's space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA's Artemis Program and China's lunar station goals.

Finally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly.

The end result of all of this is that we are about to see a flurry of missions that will attempt to land on the Moon. During the last decade, dating to China's Chang'e 3 lander in 2013, there have been six attempts to land on the Moon. Three of these missions have been Chang'e landers, and all were successful. Three other attempts, one backed by Israel, another by India's space program, and a third by a private Japanese company, ispace, have failed to softly touch down on the Moon.

Now, in the next six months, as many as six more landing attempts may come. Here's a rundown of what to expect, and when to expect it.

Chandrayaan-3 (July)

First up is the Indian space agency's Chandrayaan-3 mission to the lunar surface, which is due to launch early Friday on a Launch Vehicle Mark-III. The mission consists of a lander and a rover and follows the unsuccessful landing of the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft in 2019, which crashed into the Moon due to a software error.

The lander, named Vikram, will have a fueled mass of nearly 2 metric tons. It will carry a small 26-kg rover to the lunar surface. The goal of the mission is to make scientific observations, studying the chemical and mineral components of the lunar soil.

India has developed the mission on a shoestring budget, about $90 million, but it is important for the Indian space agency to demonstrate its competence with this second attempt—especially as its neighbor China has flown a series of increasingly complex and successful lunar missions.

Luna 25 (August)

According to Russian sources, the Luna 25 spacecraft has been delivered to its launch site at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Roscosmos has yet to announce an official date, but the expectation is that the country will target an August 11 launch on a Soyuz rocket.

It has been a very, very long time since Russia (or the Soviet Union) has launched a mission to the Moon. The Luna 24 mission, nominally the predecessor to Luna 25, launched in August 1976. It successfully landed on the Moon and returned 170 grams of lunar soil to Earth. This was the final mission of the Soviet Union, and since its dissolution, Russia has not launched a repeat mission.

The primary purpose of Luna 25 is to restart a Russian lunar program and demonstrate the capability to make a soft landing on the Moon. It will carry about 30 kg of scientific payloads to the lunar surface but not include a rover. Luna 25 has been delayed many times, but its arrival at the launch site suggests it may finally be ready to fly.

SLIM (August)

On Tuesday, the Japanese space agency, JAXA, announced a revised launch date for a pair of missions that will launch on its H2A rocket, including a small lunar lander. This Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM mission, is now slated to launch on August 26.

With a launch mass of 590 kg, SLIM is a rideshare payload flying alongside the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission. Its launch has been delayed due to issues with the primary X-ray spacecraft, as well as the H2A rocket needing additional checkouts after a failure of the H3 rocket, which shares a similar upper stage.

This will be Japan's first lunar surface mission, which seeks to demonstrate precise, pinpoint lunar landing capabilities. Japan has not outlined the full extent of its lunar plans, but the country is a participant in NASA's Artemis Accords and may send an astronaut to the surface on a future NASA mission.

IM-1 (NET 3Q 2023)

The final three missions on this list are all under contract by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Service Payloads program. In essence, NASA has bought "rides" on commercially developed lunar landers, and after several years of developmental delays, some of these missions are finally nearing readiness to fly.

The first of these is the IM-1 mission by Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company that has procured a launch on a Falcon 9 rocket for its Nova-C lander. This lander will carry five scientific payloads for NASA, as well as some commercial customers, down to the South Pole of the Moon.

Intuitive Machines has been somewhat vague regarding launch dates, but most recently chief executive Steve Altemus said the IM-1 mission would be "at the launch pad and preparing for liftoff" by the mid-to-late third quarter of this year. That was in May, and we're now in the beginning of the third quarter. If IM-1 really is going to launch this year, we should hear an update from the company soon.

Peregrine Mission One (NET 4Q 2023)

Astrobotic says its Peregrine spacecraft is ready to fly. The spacecraft, capable of carrying about one-quarter of a ton to the Moon's surface, is due to land 14 NASA payloads at the western edge of the Mare Imbrium.

However, Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic is waiting to ship its spacecraft to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station due to delays with its launch provider, United Launch Alliance, and the Vulcan rocket. The launch company recently confirmed to Ars that the Vulcan rocket will now make its debut no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year as it repairs the upper stage of its rocket.

Astrobotic is also working on a larger lander, called Griffin, that will be carrying NASA's ambitious VIPER lunar resource prospector to the Moon no earlier than 2024.

IM-2 (NET late 2023)

NASA and Intuitive Machines are still publicly targeting November 2023 for Intuitive Machines' second mission on its Nova-C lander, but that date almost certainly will slip into early 2024. The spacecraft will deliver the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 to a permanently shadowed location near Shackleton Crater.

This is an intriguing mission as it would allow NASA to directly sample areas where water ice may exist at the surface of the Moon or just below. An additional mission on Nova-C, IM-3, could follow later in 2024.

And the lunar party won't stop there. NASA has additional commercial lunar landing missions that could fly in 2024, and China is preparing a landing mission for the far side of the Moon next year that will attempt to return samples to Earth.