We’re building future technologies for the Moon without closing missed milestones
A review of upcoming and past lunar missions of this decade shows a wide gap between notions of technological progress versus achieved reality.
Image: ESA
This century has seen countries worldwide explore our Moon with new and varied technological capabilities. In recent years, Japan’s SLIM spacecraft achieved the world’s most precise robotic lunar landing while China demonstrated the first remote docking and undocking of spacecraft in lunar orbit for the Chang’e 5 sample return mission. This year Firefly’s Blue Ghost Moon lander, part of NASA’s CLPS program, got the first terrestrial navigation signal fixes all the way at the Moon. More such capabilities that have been demonstrated, and those which aren’t yet, need to come together for humans to build and sustain permanent outposts on our Moon for the exploration of itself and worlds beyond.
Below is a review of advanced capabilities that Moon missions aim to demonstrate through the remainder of this decade, achieving which can—collectively—power the foundational elements of Moonbases.
Upcoming lunar milestones
Rover autonomy: Safely operating most robotic rovers in the harsh environment of our Moon currently involves accepting the necessary lag of two-way Earth-Moon communications and human-in-loop decision making. But a bevy of upcoming rovers from organizations worldwide aim to demonstrate a variety of autonomous surface operations spanning navigation, exploration, and mapping to enable the next generation of expansive missions. These rovers will come from the UAE, US-based Astrobotic, NASA’s CADRE group, Australia, and Canada respectively.
Polar solar and nuclear power: To maximize endurance, operations time, and its effectiveness during frigid lunar nights and in harsh permanently shadowed regions at the Moon’s poles, NASA is investing in multiple companies to have large & tall vertical solar panels suited for the poles as well as nuclear power in the 100-kilowatt range.
Oxygen extraction: Both ESA and NASA are aiming to demonstrate the ability to extract oxygen from lunar soil with the upcoming missions called PROPSECT and LIFT-1 respectively. Future astronauts will benefit from such oxygen for breathable air, and eventually even use it as rocket fuel too. With this ability, we will no longer need to carry and drag ample oxygen out of Earth’s gruesome gravity well.
Resource utilization: China’s upcoming Chang’e 8 mission aims to go one step further. It would not only melt lunar soil but also transform it via 3D printing into bricks and assemble basic structures out of them. Chang’e 8 aims to test techniques for construction of future lunar infrastructure like habitats and landing pads in the build up to the Sino-led Moonbase called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS).
An artist’s concept showing the concept of the Sino-led ILRS Moonbase. Image: CNSA / Roscosmos
Navigation and communications: With recent demonstrations of automated navigation, accurate distance measurements, and low-energy orbital transfers, China is gearing up to create the Queqiao network of lunar satellites that enable Mooncraft to navigate autonomously and provide them with high-bandwidth communications independently of Earth.
Advanced mobility: Upcoming large rovers in the class of the Artemis Lunar Terrain Vehicle will be able to explore our Moon longer, farther, and across more terrains than any rover before. It will also host astronauts during their lunar visits.
In-space refueling: Both SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon spacecraft aim to refuel in Earth orbit to enable their respective plans & contracts of landing Artemis astronauts on the Moon for NASA by the end of the decade. In-space refueling would unlock large payload capacities and better spacecraft maneuverability across the Solar System. Combined with several capabilities above, it also lays the pathway for using the Moon as a future launch base to other places in our Solar System.
Gaining these capabilities would represent a huge feasibility leap in having permanent human or robotic outposts across the Solar System. However, these technological milestones, while necessary, are insufficient in themselves to achieve the goal. They need to work in tandem with several other technologies which have all gone unachieved in past Moon missions as listed below.
Missing the mark
Water ice: Virtually all recent lunar surface and orbital missions funded by NASA have failed to explore lunar water as the foundational goal of the US’ Artemis program. China’s Chang’e 7 lander and rover, targeting launch next year, will be the first attempt by the Chinese to advance on the same.
Safer landings: NASA flew an advanced LiDAR-based sensor on Intuitive Machines’ first CLPS Moon lander in 2024. The mission was supposed to validate the sensor’s use in enabling autonomously safe and precise landings. But issues with retrieving sensor data during the lander’s descent coupled with the hard landing did not allow said technology’s validation.
Lunar sample ownership transfer: In 2020, NASA contracted three companies to each collect lunar soil after their respective landings and then virtually transfer its ownership to NASA. It aimed to set precedence for legal frameworks that would enable extracting and utilizing resources on the Moon and in space in the future. But the flown missions, one by Lunar Outpost and two by ispace, failed to operate on the Moon. The only other award was to Masten Space, who filed for bankruptcy in 2022 and its CLPS mission contract became void.
Smart lunar night survival: NASA’s VIPER rover, whose fate is now uncertain, was supposed to test a technique on the Moon’s south pole of intermittently parking at pre-identified high-altitude spots where nights are shorter due to the local topography, thereby enabling the mission to last six months or more. This would allow future autonomous rovers to efficiently explore the lunar poles and its water ice. Now the upcoming joint Indo-Japanese LUPEX rover hopes to demonstrate and utilize this technique during its mission to study water ice.
A reference traverse path for NASA’s VIPER rover on the Moon’s south pole. Image: NASA
A pattern for lunar landing failures
Those key technological milestones that we wished for have been missed because reliably landing and operating on the Moon remains hard. About half the world’s lunar landing attempts still fail. And most missions get delayed. As the following recent Moon landing attempts illustrate, a truly comprehensive testing regime for landers during their development is non-optional for success.
ISRO attributes Chandrayaan 3’s triumphant touchdown on the Moon principally to the emphasis on demonstrating the lander system’s performance down to its specifics post Chandrayaan 2’s failure.
Both of Intuitive Machines’ CLPS landers hard-landed on the Moon due to inadequate testing and checkouts of their laser rangefinders. ispace Japan’s second Moon landing attempt shared a similar fate this year due to performance issues with its laser rangefinder.
Astrobotic’s first CLPS lander Peregrine failed because of skipping comprehensive launch environmental testing of its propulsion system.
In contrast, Firefly proactively kept ample safety margins through terrestrial testing as well as for spaceflight deviances and anomalies to achieve the first true soft landing for NASA CLPS earlier this year.
The Athena CLPS lander lying on its side after a hard landing, as captured from one of its navigation cameras. Image: Intuitive Machines
As indispensable as comprehensive testing is, another hard fact is that private companies and emerging space nations don’t have the kind of large budgets or time afforded by advanced government space agencies. This necessarily implies lesser overall redundancy in their lander designs as well as a testing regime that’s always battling cost and schedule—all leading to greater risks. Even fuel margins on privately built landers tend to be on the lower side because every kilogram of added fuel reserve would take away at least several hundred thousand dollars worth of commercial payload capacity. But alas, the closer a lander is to the surface during lunar descent, the lesser its ability to self-correct amid depleting fuel reserves. Based on these observations, the Open Lunar Foundation notes a fundamental issue with this approach:
“Rather than one agency attempting seven landings, a growing number of new actors are launching their first or second attempts. Instead of hard won lessons flowing freely into the next mission, knowledge is often siloed, treated as proprietary by agencies and companies, and so potentially avoidable mistakes can resurface. [...] Collaboration becomes critical to ensure that tens of millions of dollars of investment and years of work aren’t lost in the final seconds of flight. The more we can share data from these attempts, the more return humanity as a whole makes on these investments. The Moon is hard, but there is no reason to make it harder.”
Information sharing is known to enable cutting-edge space missions. Unfortunately though, there are currently no institutionalized mechanisms that do so while also scaling with the increasing pace of Moon missions worldwide. Different states share different information at different times, in different formats, and through different channels at varying levels. Amid competition, companies remain tightfisted about sharing information even on mission aspects that aren’t sensitive to intellectual property. Information sharing and coordination is thus dispersed and limited, and not efficient for safety, sustainability, or abundant progress. If we improve it to accommodate more actors, we can compound perks for all. It’s to this end that Open Lunar has embarked upon the Lunar Ledger project for companies and organizations to reliably share technical data for the safety and success of all.
Our Earth on the Moon’s horizon as imaged by South Korea’s KPLO lunar orbiter. Image: KARI
In parallel, the non-profit Lunar Policy Platform (LPP) , with funding from Open Lunar and in synergy with multilateral initiatives within UN COPUOS, started the “Lunar Information Sharing 101” initiative. It has consulted over 70 representatives from 35 governments, space agencies, companies, and experts to understand converging and diverging views on when, where, and how to share lunar mission information. Open Lunar has also submitted a formal Conference Room paper to COPUOS, which outlines how the Lunar Ledger complements the UN’s efforts by enabling rapid, transparent data sharing among multiple types of lunar actors.
Core challenges still remain in harmonizing humanity’s technological abilities through effective collaboration. Only then do we gain more than the sum of our parts. Christine Tiballi, the Lunar Ledger Lead and a researcher with Open Lunar, highlights one such challenge in the Lunar Compass:
“Over the next decade and beyond, the Moon will bear witness to increasing levels of activity: the most significant and perhaps consequential loci are the Artemis Base (US-led coalition) and the China and Russia led International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Both align signatories along mission milestones with increasing cadence and complexity, married to technological and scientific advancement, In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), and strategies of incremental autonomy. But despite the parallel focus on standards, cooperation, and interoperability, neither explicitly states its objectives in relation to non-appropriation (permanence), nor its willingness to cooperate (beyond due regard) with the other, setting the stage for terrestrial geopolitical conflict to remain tethered to us.”
