Author Topic: Next Moon flight (Read 42636 times)

Phil Stooke · « **Reply #20 on:** 05/14/2023 09:09 pm »

"Chang'e 4 return some weird photos of a plant on the far side of the Moon inside of what looked like a very cheap plastic container. Then Chang'e 5 returned samples but that is the last we heard of it ... I was hoping they would share some with other countries."

This is a completely unfair characterization of China's lunar program. The science journals are full of articles based on Chang'e 4 and 5 results. Scientists from many countries including the USA and Europe have been parts of teams analyzing these results. As I understand it, we will soon be seeing invitations from other countries to obtain samples from CE5 for analysis. It's not surprising that Cbinese PIs would get the first go at it.

"I am still perplexed that nobody tries to use lunar water or at least make a decent effort to try to land at the poles and take some water samples."

VIPER will be doing that (if all goes well), not to mention IM-2 and others of the current crop of landers. Not to mention the recent attempts, all sadly failed, to do studies from low orbits - Flashlight, LunaH-map, IceCube. People are working on it. Your statement is another unfair characterization.

laszlo · « **Reply #21 on:** 05/15/2023 11:14 am »

Quote from: turbopumpfeedback2 on 05/13/2023 11:40 am

Quote from: Zed_Noir on 05/13/2023 08:58 am

... Someone who can regularly landed a booster on a floating platform in the middle of the ocean, should be able to do a landing on the Lunar surface better than someone who have no practice landing a rocket. ...

Great point!

Irrelevant point, The only similarity is a rocket descending engine first toward a surface.

F9 Landing:
1. Solid landing pad
2. High-g planet
3. Atmosphere to to help with the steering (gridfins) as well as slowing the vehicle down (air resistance)
4. Starting from sub-orbital altitude and velocities
5. GPS aided
6. Landing within 10 minutes of launch after a thorough pre-flight checkout

Lunar Landing:
1. Land in dirt kicking dust, soil and rocks everywhere
2. Low-g body
3. Vacuum
4. Starting from orbital altitude and velocities or even direct from trans-lunar
5. No in-place nav aids
6. Minimum of a multi-day trans-lunar coast after launch

Phil Stooke · « **Reply #22 on:** 05/31/2023 06:23 am »

Returning to the question of the next Moon flight... the situation changes every week. We just learned that Luna 25 is delayed a month.

This is my current and highly speculative list of possible dates. Probably push every thing back a month or two and it might be right! But these are the dates that are being discussed.

July??? Astrobotic
July Chandrayaan 3
August Luna 25
August SLIM
September Intuitive IM-1
early next year Intuitive IM-2

Lampyridae · « **Reply #23 on:** 05/31/2023 09:16 am »

Quote from: Phil Stooke on 05/14/2023 09:09 pm

"Chang'e 4 return some weird photos of a plant on the far side of the Moon inside of what looked like a very cheap plastic container. Then Chang'e 5 returned samples but that is the last we heard of it ... I was hoping they would share some with other countries."

This is a completely unfair characterization of China's lunar program. The science journals are full of articles based on Chang'e 4 and 5 results. Scientists from many countries including the USA and Europe have been parts of teams analyzing these results. As I understand it, we will soon be seeing invitations from other countries to obtain samples from CE5 for analysis. It's not surprising that Cbinese PIs would get the first go at it.

"I am still perplexed that nobody tries to use lunar water or at least make a decent effort to try to land at the poles and take some water samples."

VIPER will be doing that (if all goes well), not to mention IM-2 and others of the current crop of landers. Not to mention the recent attempts, all sadly failed, to do studies from low orbits - Flashlight, LunaH-map, IceCube. People are working on it. Your statement is another unfair characterization.

The ice reserve at the lunar poles may well be much larger and much harder to extract than previously believed. Until recently the assumption based on interpretation of the remote sensing data was that the ice was loosely mixed in the upper surface in some form, having gathered there *after* the formation of the craters. Newer models suggest that the volatiles were placed during the first few hundred million years. The older craters with the thickest ice deposits will likely have been blanketed several times with ejecta from the newer ones (Cannon et al., 2020). The ejecta blankets will also have disrupted the ice deposits, resulting in them being thinner and less homogeneous (Udovicic et al., 2022).

The only way to know for sure is to go and look, with something like VIPER. It'll probably take a crewed mission with a rover to really get a firm idea, eg Artemis V in ~2029 Elon Time.

Vahe231991 · « **Reply #24 on:** 06/01/2023 04:08 pm »

Quote from: Phil Stooke on 05/31/2023 06:23 am

Returning to the question of the next Moon flight... the situation changes every week. We just learned that Luna 25 is delayed a month.

This is my current and highly speculative list of possible dates. Probably push every thing back a month or two and it might be right! But these are the dates that are being discussed.

July??? Astrobotic
July Chandrayaan 3
August Luna 25
August SLIM
September Intuitive IM-1
early next year Intuitive IM-2

The Chandrayaan 3 mission is now scheduled to launch on July 12:
https://idrw.org/chandrayaan-3-to-be-launched-on-july-12/

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #25 on:** 06/15/2023 07:53 pm »

There is also a list on a NASA page: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/moonpage.html

They give the future missions as:

Future Missions

Peregrine Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Luna 25 - Roscosmos (Russia) Lunar Lander (2023)
IM-1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
SLIM - JAXA (Japan) Lunar Lander (2023)
Prime 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Cislunar Explorers - NASA Technology Test CubeSats (TBD)
Masten Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Griffin Mission 1 - VIPER - NASA Lunar South Pole Rover (2024)
Lunar Trailblazer - NASA Lunar Orbiting Small Satellite (2024)
Intuitive Machines 3 - NASA Lunar Lander and Rovers (2024)
Chang'e 6 - CNSA (China) Lunar Sample Return Mission (2024)
Chang'e 7 - CNSA (China) Lunar Survey Mission (2026)
Chang'e 8 - CNSA (China) Lunar Technology Test Mission (TBD)

Quite surprising they don't mention Chandrayaan-3.

But the last change of the page is: "Last updated: 13 December 2022"

The page has some nice info about payload for the Astrobotic mission.

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #26 on:** 06/15/2023 08:04 pm »

Info about Astrobotic first mission from the link above:

Peregrine Mission 1 (TO2-AB)NSSDCA ID: PEREGRN-1

Description

Launch of Peregrine Mission 1 is no longer targeted for its planned May 4 date due to anomalies found in tests of the Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle. A new launch date will be announced once the launch vehicle investigation is completed.

Peregrine Mission 1 (TO2-AB), or the Peregrine Lunar Lander, carrying scientific and other payloads to the Moon, is planned to touch down on the lunar surface on Sinus Viscositatis. The scientific objectives of the mission are to study the lunar exosphere, thermal properties and hydrogen abundance of the lunar regolith, magnetic fields, and the radiation environment. It will also test advanced solar arrays. Peregrine Mission 1 was selected through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, in which NASA contracts with a commercial partner, in this case Astrobotic, that provides the launch and lander.

Spacecraft and Subsystems

Peregrine Mission 1 is about 1.9 m high and roughly 2.5 m across. It is a box-shaped main body sitting on four landing legs. The main structural landing bus is composed of aluminum isogrid shear panels and aluminum honeycomb mounting surfaces with one primary deck divided into four parts. Propulsion is provided by five ISE-100 667-N thrusters mounted on the bottom of the lander. They use a hypergolic system of Mono-Methyl Hydrazine (MMH) fuel and dinitrogen tetroxide/nitrogen dioxide, 25% Mixed Oxides of Nitrogen (MON-25) oxidizer. Four sets of three 45-N attitude control thrusters maintain orientation. Attitude knowledge is provided by Sun and star trackers, inertial measurement, and Doppler radio and LIDAR, with the landing sensors mounted on the bottom of the bus.

Power (at 28 V, max. 480 W) is generated by GaInP/GaAs/Ge triple junction solar cells mounted on the top of the lander on a 1.8 square meter panel, and is stored in lithium-ion batteries with a capacity of 840 Whr. Communications (X-band downlink, S-band uplink) are via a medium gain, low-gain, and WLAN antennas. Thermal control is achieved by radiators and multi-layer insulation blankets.

The mission will carry about 10 payloads of various types, the lander has a payload mass capacity of 90 kg. The scientific payload includes the Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA), Linear Energy Transfer Spectrometer (LETS), Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System (NIRVSS), PROSPECT Ion-Trap Mass Spectrometer (PITMS), and Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS). Five other science payloads were originally planned for Peregrine Mission 1, but are being reallocated to other future lunar delivery missions. These are: Photovoltaic Investigation on Lunar Surface (PILS), Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSolo), and Neutron Measurements at the Lunar Surface (NMLS), Fluxgate Magnetometer (MAG), and Surface Exosphere Alterations by Landers (SEAL).

Mission Profile

Launch will take place from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket in the VC2S configuration, with 2 GEM-63XL solid boosters, a standard short faring, and two RL10 engines in the Centaur upper stage. The launch was scheduled for 4 May, but has been delayed while an investigation into anomalies found during testing of the launch vehicle are being investigated. After a 3 to 33 day Earth orbit and cruise to the Moon, followed by a 4 to 25 day lunar orbit phase, it will descend and land in Sinus Viscositatis (Bay of Stickiness) adjacent to the Gruitheisen Domes on the northeast border of Oceanus Procellarum (Ocean of Storms). It is planned to land 55-110 hours after local sunrise and to operate for about 192 hours.

For more on NASA's CLPS initiative and missions, see:

DanClemmensen · « **Reply #27 on:** 06/15/2023 08:10 pm »

Quote from: turbopumpfeedback2 on 06/15/2023 08:04 pm

Launch of Peregrine Mission 1 is no longer targeted for its planned May 4 date due to anomalies found in tests of the Vulcan Centaur launch vehicle. A new launch date will be announced once the launch vehicle investigation is completed.

And ULA says that the first Vulcan flight (this flight) is NET Q4 2023.

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #28 on:** 06/15/2023 08:14 pm »

So it looks like next flight is Chandrayaan-3. The Wikipedia still says 12th July: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3

Zed_Noir · « **Reply #29 on:** 06/16/2023 01:00 pm »

Quote from: turbopumpfeedback2 on 06/15/2023 07:53 pm

There is also a list on a NASA page: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/moonpage.html

They give the future missions as:

Future Missions

Peregrine Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Luna 25 - Roscosmos (Russia) Lunar Lander (2023)
IM-1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
SLIM - JAXA (Japan) Lunar Lander (2023)
Prime 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Cislunar Explorers - NASA Technology Test CubeSats (TBD)
~~Masten Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)~~
Griffin Mission 1 - VIPER - NASA Lunar South Pole Rover (2024)
Lunar Trailblazer - NASA Lunar Orbiting Small Satellite (2024)
Intuitive Machines 3 - NASA Lunar Lander and Rovers (2024)
Chang'e 6 - CNSA (China) Lunar Sample Return Mission (2024)
Chang'e 7 - CNSA (China) Lunar Survey Mission (2026)
Chang'e 8 - CNSA (China) Lunar Technology Test Mission (TBD)

<snip>

Masten Space Systems is defunct, declared chapter 11 bankruptcy. The assets of Masten was audition off on September 13, 2022 and acquired by Astrobotics.

Phil Stooke · « **Reply #30 on:** 06/19/2023 02:50 am »

I would not include Cislunar Explorers either. Sure, they MIGHT fly, but this was one of the Artemis 1 stable of cubesats which didn't make the launch date. Originally intended to fly a race with two others, but as only one launched there was no race, and it never accomplished anything (as far as one can tell from the deafening silence which enveloped the whole Artemis 1 cubesat endeavour) so there really is not much point, or likelihood in my view, that Cislunar Explorers will fly. It was a student-focused project from Cornell University. I do wish it well but one has to be realistic.

Anyway, Chandrayaan 3 looks like the most likely next lunar flight at the moment.

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #31 on:** 06/28/2023 08:00 pm »

Chandrayaan-3 launch window is July 12-19 says ISRO chief:

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/chandrayaan-3-launch-scheduled-for-july-13-isro/articleshow/101342875.cms

Also same dates on the NASA page: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=CHANDRYN3

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #32 on:** 07/05/2023 08:16 pm »

Chandrayaan-3, launch date and time:

13 July 2023, 9:00 UTC

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3
https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/chandrayaan-3-launch-scheduled-for-july-13-officials/article67019682.ece

turbopumpfeedback2 · « **Reply #33 on:** 07/14/2023 10:55 am »

Chandrayaan 3 launched.

Next up should be Luna 25 on August 10th according to wikipedia.

Vahe231991 · « **Reply #34 on:** 07/15/2023 07:53 pm »

Quote from: turbopumpfeedback2 on 07/14/2023 10:55 am

Chandrayaan 3 launched.

Next up should be Luna 25 on August 10th according to wikipedia.

The Luna 25 has been delivered to the Vostochny launch site in the Russian Far East to be mated with the Soyuz-2.1b launch vehicle for launch next month after so many delays:
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/space/russias-luna-25-lunar-lander-arrives-vostochny-spaceport

ironnitride · « **Reply #35 on:** 07/16/2023 10:22 pm »

Quote from: turbopumpfeedback2 on 06/15/2023 07:53 pm

There is also a list on a NASA page: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/moonpage.html

They give the future missions as:

Future Missions

Peregrine Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Luna 25 - Roscosmos (Russia) Lunar Lander (2023)
IM-1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
SLIM - JAXA (Japan) Lunar Lander (2023)
Prime 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Cislunar Explorers - NASA Technology Test CubeSats (TBD)
Masten Mission 1 - NASA CLPS Lunar Lander (2023)
Griffin Mission 1 - VIPER - NASA Lunar South Pole Rover (2024)
Lunar Trailblazer - NASA Lunar Orbiting Small Satellite (2024)
Intuitive Machines 3 - NASA Lunar Lander and Rovers (2024)
Chang'e 6 - CNSA (China) Lunar Sample Return Mission (2024)
Chang'e 7 - CNSA (China) Lunar Survey Mission (2026)
Chang'e 8 - CNSA (China) Lunar Technology Test Mission (TBD)

That is a great list, would be worth adding ESA's Argonaut lander as well, for completeness.

link: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/Argonaut

From the website it seems to be a 10ton lander capable of landing "anywhere" on the lunar surface, launch date is not mentioned however.

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/Terrae_Novae_Europe_s_exploration_vision

This link however says "Begin the design and development of Europe’s large lunar lander, Argonaut, a multi-mission delivery truck for scientific payloads, rovers and infrastructure that will support sustained human exploration throughout the 2030s and ensure the first European steps onto the Moon’s surface before 2030." So probably landing before the end of the decade!

Would be intresting to see how this falls in the Artemis plans.

Blue Moon lander also could be added tied to Artemis V (2029?).

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-blue-origin-as-second-artemis-lunar-lander-provider

Vahe231991 · « **Reply #36 on:** 08/04/2023 12:11 am »

The SLIM lunar lander is scheduled to launch on August 26:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/12/jaxa_slim_xrism_august_launch/

Vahe231991 · « **Reply #37 on:** 08/04/2023 12:27 am »

The IM-1 lander is now scheduled for launch in late 2023:
https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/1915

Phil Stooke · « **Reply #38 on:** 08/07/2023 08:22 pm »

No earlier than December, so possibly late 2023. But note that the text also says the lander is going to Oceanus Procellarum, which as we know is not the case.

Vahe231991 · « **Reply #39 on:** 08/10/2023 11:55 pm »

The Luna 25 mission has finally launched after over two decades of development.

Link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/10/science/russia-moon-launch.html