ASSESSMENTS
In Racing to the Moon, India Makes
History as Russia Falters
Aug 24, 2023 | 18:30 GMT
(TAUSEEF MUSTAFA/AFP via Getty Images)
Lunar exploration will be a focal point of the 21st-century space race, as countries and companies seek to establish a presence on the moon as a starting point for deep space exploitation. But the divergent outcomes of recent lunar missions also demonstrate the challenges that will hobble some space powers, most notably Russia. On Aug. 23, the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 mission and its Vikram lunar lander successfully performed a soft landing on the moon near the lunar south pole. In doing so, India became only the fourth country to successfully perform a soft-landing on the lunar surface (after the Soviet Union, United States and China) — and the first to do so near the lunar south pole, where craters are believed to have high concentrations of water ice. Three days earlier, Russian space agency Roscosmos' Luna-25 lander, which was racing to beat India to the lunar south pole, crashed into the moon following an improper thrust burn while moving into lunar orbit.
- In April, Japanese space company iSpace's Hakuto-R lander crashed into the moon after running out of fuel for the engines to slow the lander's descent down to the lunar surface after a software glitch misjudged its altitude.
- In November, U.S. space company Intuitive Machines plans to launch its own lunar lander that is also targeting the lunar south pole. Intuitive Machines is one of two companies winning task orders under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The second company, Astrobotic, is also planning to soon launch its Peregrine lunar lander. Astrobotic's lander has been constructed but is waiting for its launcher, the Vulcan Centaur, to be ready, which is due no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2023. Neither NASA nor private U.S. firms have attempted a soft landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 manned lunar mission in 1972.
The rise of non-U.S. and Russian space powers and the commercialization of the space industry have dramatically rekindled lunar exploration and deep space exploration as the moon's resources become more crucial for space programs. From the mid-1970s until 2013, there was a dearth of moon missions as the United States and the Soviet Union (and later Russia) shifted their focus toward low-Earth orbit (LEO) and space stations following the 1960s race to the moon. Between the last Soviet lunar mission in 1976 and China's Chang'e 3 lander in 2013, there were zero attempted soft landings on the moon, with most missions involving an orbiter or probe designed to crash on impact. China's economic and technological rise during the 1990s and 2000s enabled it to become one of the world's most prolific space powers, in many respects surpassing the Russians and, in some ways, matching the Americans. Since then, India has also risen to become another major space power. Because India and China had never perfected and developed the technologies for lunar missions as the United States and Soviet Union did in the 1960s and 1970s, lunar missions represented the first step they could take to do so. Meanwhile, the commercialization of the space industry in the United States led by companies like SpaceX has dramatically reduced the costs of space exploration, further enabling NASA and private space companies to join the race as well. In this increasingly competitive environment, the United States, Russia and China are all envisioning manned space missions, or even establishing permanent or long-term human presence on the moon, where water and other natural resources are becoming increasingly crucial for space plans. While launch costs have declined, water still has a relatively high mass that makes ferrying large volumes of water from Earth to the moon cost-prohibitive. By finding and commercializing water ice on the moon, a larger human population could be sustained. The water could also be used for manufacturing and/or even fuel for a mission beyond the moon. For this reason, the moon — as well as other critical areas in space like the geostationary orbits and stable equilibrium Lagrange points — are becoming strategic and essential for any space-faring nation.
- In 2030, China is aiming to land its own spacefarers — known as taikonauts — on the moon for the first time. The mission plans to launch two separate rockets, with one carrying a lunar lander and the other carrying the taikonauts, that will then perform a lunar orbit rendezvous.
- China's space agency is also collaborating with Russia's Roscosmos on building a joint moon base, the International Lunar Research Station, by the mid-2030s. China has performed three soft landings on the moon. China's next mission, Chang'e 6, is due to launch in 2024 and is ambitiously aiming to return a sample from the South Pole-Aitken basin on the far side of the moon.
- The United States is in the middle of its Artemis Program, which aims to send astronauts back to the moon, as well as establish the Lunar Gateway space station to serve as a staging point for yearly manned missions to the lunar surface. The Artemis I mission launched in 2022 as an integrated test flight for the Orion spacecraft and NASA's new Space Launch System. The Artemis II mission, tentatively scheduled for 2024, aims to be the first crewed flyby of the moon since the 1970s. The Artemis III mission, tentatively scheduled for 2025, aims to return astronauts to the moon, though NASA officials recently hinted that delays to SpaceX's Starship launcher could result in the mission only being a rendezvous with the Lunar Gateway.
For India, successful missions to the moon, in addition to its growing near-Earth space capabilities, provide national security benefits vis-a-vis China and potentially lucrative business opportunities for its engineering and software industries. China's rising space ambitions and capabilities are the main driver behind India's strategic space priorities, particularly as space becomes increasingly used for national security and military applications. Over the last two decades, India's space program has transformed from one highly dependent on external support from other space agencies like NASA to one that is starting to become more indigenous in its development. The apparent successful Chandrayaan-3 mission demonstrates the overall advancement of India's space capabilities, as well as its space agency ISRO. Beyond the mission itself, India has developed the Indian Deep Space Network, a network of antennas designed to facilitate communications with its interplanetary spacecraft. India has also completed the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System, which would enable India to maintain Earth surface navigation if it cannot access foreign navigation satellite systems, similar to the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS). And in 2019, India became the fourth country to perform an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon test. Commercially, India has over 140 space startups that are attracting millions of dollars in venture capital each year, meaning the country's overall technology and manufacturing ambitions are creating more commercial opportunities for Indian-built space technologies, like satellites, as well.
For Russia, the failed Luna-25 mission marks another major setback, which risks seeing the country fall even further behind in space exploration. Today, Russia's space program is largely resting on the laurels of what survived the fall of the Soviet Union: rocket launchers and space station technology. The Luna-25 mission was the Soviet Union/Russia's first moon mission in nearly 50 years, and its failure marks Russia's third failed attempt at major planetary exploration missions since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union's lunar program was relatively successful in the 1960s and 1970s. But for Russia, restoring the program to its former glory will likely prove extremely challenging, as all of the engineers and scientists who were involved in the successful Soviet programs are either dead or retired. This loss of institutional knowledge means that Russia essentially has to re-learn, re-engineer and rebuild its planetary exploration program — a task that will be made all the more difficult by Russia's brain drain and exodus of scientists and engineers in recent years. Moreover, Russia's technological advancements required for space exploration — in fields like robotics, semiconductors, computer hardware and software — have fallen well behind global leaders, and Western sanctions on Russia's access to imported technology make procuring them for a space program even more arduous. While it will still be able to take advantage of some of the Soviet legacy technologies, these constraints mean Russia will continue to struggle to both compete in planetary space exploration, as well as keep the costs of such exploration on par with SpaceX and other commercial space companies. This will, in turn, limit Russia's ability to effectively integrate new space technologies into national security ambitions, and diminish its ability to contribute to space exploration beyond LEO.
- In 1996, Russia launched a mission to Mars that aimed to perform a soft landing on the Red Planet. But the spacecraft broke apart after it failed to reach Earth's orbit and re-entered Earth's atmosphere. In 2011, Russia attempted the Phobos-Grunt mission, aiming to land on Phobos, one of Mars' moons. It failed to leave Earth's orbit after rocket burns intended to set it on course to Mars failed.
For China, Russia's struggling planetary exploration program risks making it an unreliable partner for the moon base Beijing is planning to build with Moscow, forcing China to shoulder more of the burden. China could try to attract partnerships with other space powers. But with Western countries increasingly wary of working with China (and with the United States convincing other space powers to sign its Artemis Accords that enshrine U.S. views on how moon exploration should be regulated), Beijing's options are largely limited to countries with far less advanced space programs. Indeed, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela are the only other countries that have so far joined the Sino-Russian International Lunar Research Station initiative. But none of these three countries have significant capabilities as launch providers, and only the United Arab Emirates has dabbled in deep space exploration in a more than cursory fashion. Thanks to its technological and financial prowess, China will likely still be able to offset Russia's ailing space capabilities, but it'll come at the cost of Beijing shouldering more of the investment and risk burden. However, China hopes to use its space program and moon base as a way for cooperation with other space-faring nations. Thus, Russia's constraints on being an active party would blunt China's image that it is trying to collaborate more with other space powers as, without Russia's deep involvement, China has no non-Western and non-Indian alternatives.
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