Sixty years after the Soviet Union’s “soft landing” on the Moon, lunar missions continue to face significant challenges, with many failures reported in recent years.
The news outlet The Conversation raises several questions: Why do some missions fail? What can be learned as a recipe for success in space missions?
The Race to the Moon
To date, the Moon remains the only celestial body that humans have visited. Naturally, humans traveled to the Moon first because it is the closest planet to us, located about 400,000 km away.
However, only four countries have achieved successful “soft landings”—where the spacecraft survives upon landing—on the lunar surface.
Countries flocking to the Moon – (Photo: AFP).
The Soviet Union was the first country to achieve this milestone. Luna 9 successfully landed on the Moon nearly 60 years ago, in February 1966.
Four months later, the United States’ Surveyor 1 touched down on the Moon’s Sea of Clouds in June 1966.
China joined the “Moon club” with its Chang’e 3 spacecraft in 2013.
And now, India has also reached the Moon with its Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Missions from Japan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Israel, Russia, the European Space Agency, Luxembourg, South Korea, and Italy have also achieved some “measures of success” with flybys of the Moon’s orbit.
Incidents Are Not Rare
On August 19, 2023, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced that “communication with the Luna 25 spacecraft had been interrupted.” An attempt to re-establish contact on August 20 was unsuccessful, leading Roscosmos to conclude that Luna 25 had crashed.
The failure of Luna 25 recalls two notable lunar incidents in 2019.
In April 2019, Israel’s Beresheet lander crashed after its gyroscope malfunctioned during descent, causing the ground control team to lose contact.
And in September 2019, India attempted to land its Vikram lander on the Moon’s surface, but it was unable to “survive” the landing.
Space Remains Risky
Space missions are inherently risky endeavors. Only slightly more than 50% of lunar landings have been successful.
Even small satellites launched into Earth orbit achieve only about 40-70% success rates.
Why Do So Many Uncrewed Missions Fail?
There are numerous reasons: technological difficulties, lack of experience, and even the political context of each nation.
However, one fact remains: rocket launches into space are not a common occurrence in national agendas.
Globally, there are about 1.5 billion cars and 40,000 airplanes. In contrast, throughout the history of aerospace, there have been fewer than 20,000 rocket launches into space.
Many issues still persist with today’s commercial aircraft and in the realm of road transportation.
Therefore, it would be unrealistic to expect spaceflight to quickly resolve all problems, whether during the rocket launch phase or the rarer phase of attempting to land on an alien world.
To undertake long-distance space travel over extended periods, numerous challenges must be addressed.
Some issues seem likely to be resolved soon, such as better radiation shielding, self-sustaining ecosystems, automated robots, air and water extraction, and dealing with microgravity.
If viewing lunar missions as research endeavors, scientists will have time to carefully consider each detail, which is undoubtedly preferable to betting on a race for political power, according to The Conversation.
