It was not certain at the beginning what a spacecraft would look like. At first we thought of a single spacecraft for outward and return flights and landing, because the technology for docking maneuvers in space was not yet available. The following concepts were available to choose from:
Direct flight with a rocket from the surface of the Earth to the surface of the moon and back
Assembly of the ship in orbit, then direct flight
Flight with rendezvous maneuver in orbit
Direct flight with refueling on the moon’s surface—an automated supply ship having landed the fuel there prior
It turned out that none of these concepts were able to be realized. The Saturn V rocket was too weak for the direct flight, and assembly in space would have required many launches—up to 15. In the end, spacecraft and lander were separated. That allowed each to be better optimized for its purpose.
Initially, NASA made provisions for seven missions leading up to the first landing, assigned the letters A to G, later adding H to J.
A: Unmanned test of Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft (Apollo 4 + Apollo 6)
B: Unmanned test of the Lunar Module (Apollo 5)
C: Manned test of the Apollo spacecraft (Apollo 7)
C’: First moon circumnavigation at the end of 1968, unscheduled
D: Test of command module and lander in a low Earth orbit (Apollo 9)
E: Test of command module and lander in a remote Earth orbit (canceled in favor of C’)
F: Test of command module and lander in moon orbit (Apollo 10)
G: First moon landing (Apollo 11)
H: Moon landing with additional experiments (Apollo 12 and 14)
I: Manned flight into moon orbit for research without landing (canceled)
J: Moon landing with rover (Apollo 15, 16, and 17)
The program ended with Apollo 17, although NASA would probably have liked to have continued it. In total, the U.S. spent 23.9 billion dollars, which is equivalent to about 200 billion dollars today.
The series of Apollo tests began with a catastrophe. During a preflight test on the ground, fire broke out in the capsule later called ‘Apollo 1’. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee died as a result.
The program reached its goal on July 20, 1969, with Apollo 11 landing on the moon and returning safely. On July 21, at 02:56:20 UTC, Neil Armstrong stepped into Mare Tranquillitatis as the first human on the moon, with the famous sentence: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
So far, a total of 12 Americans have walked on the moon. To date, Eugene Cernan, Apollo 17 Commander, is the last person to have been on the moon.
How the Soviet Union missed out on the moon
With the launch of Sputnik 1 in October of 1957, and then Vostok 1 in April of 1961, which carried Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space, the Soviet Union had twice won the race of the superpowers. Two days after Gagarin’s return, President Kennedy initiated the race to the moon, a fact known to very few at that point. Kennedy announced the program officially on May 25.
The Soviet leadership reacted to this hesitantly—perhaps shying away from the costs. The challenges were enormous. The launcher load capacity had to be increased from under 10 tons to around 100 tons. The previous space capsules were far too small for a multi-day journey to the moon. The docking technology was still in its teething stage, and there was no landing module.
The scientists would have preferred to get to Mars, as it was significantly more attractive than the moon as an object of exploration. As early as the 1950s, Soviet engineers had been planning a comprehensive expedition to our neighboring planet. Among them was OKB-1 (Opytnoye Konstruktorskoye Buro, the Experimental Design Bureau), known today as RSC (Rocket and Science Corp) Energia. N1 designer Korolev later explained that the first designs for the heavy-lift rocket came about as part of a possible Mars expedition.
The plans were phenomenal. With 20 to 25 N1 launchers in orbit, they wanted to build a 1,600-ton Mars spacecraft—MPK for Martian Piloted Complex (Kompleks)—that would reach the red planet after 270 days of flight time, depositing a lander there. A year later, the ship was to fly back to Earth. However, the concept was soon classified as unrealistic and was downsized. The ‘TMK,’ designed in 1959, was to weigh only 75 tons and fly to Mars manned by three cosmonauts. A modified concept included an additional circumnavigation of Venus. In 1966, shortly before all resources were concentrated on the race to the moon, Korolev’s bureau designed yet another comprehensive landing mission set to launch in 1980.
In 1962, OKB-1 then began to evaluate various moon-flight projects. Based on the Mars concepts and the 75-ton-capacity N1 rocket, the preferred scenario at first was to bring a lunar spacecraft into orbit with three N1 launchers and two tankers that were to supply the lunar spacecraft with the necessary fuel. But a lunar station (L4) was also discussed, intended to serve as a launching point for further space exploration—in other words, an early precursor to NASA’s Lunar Gateway. These complex schemes were then reduced to the L3 project, which consisted of the N1 rocket, the ‘LOK’ spacecraft equipped with two boosters, and the ‘LK’ lander. There were to be two cosmonauts on board, one of whom would have performed an EVA while in the moon’s orbit and transferred into the LK, using that to land for 6 to 24 hours.
At the same time, Vladimir Chelomey’s OKB-52 space agency was working on concepts for orbiting the moon based on the Proton rocket and a two-seater Soyuz capsule. On August 1, 1964, this allocation was confirmed by decree of the Council of Ministers. “We must not leave the moon to the Americans,” Nikita Khrushchev supposedly said. “We will provide everything that is needed.”
However, Khrushchev had already been removed from power by the time the L3 project was officially adopted in February of 1965, with its first flight to the moon planned for November of 1967.
The division of the moon program between various design bureaus, which had long since developed into independent companies, delayed development. A total of 500 organizations from 26 Ministries participated, all of which had to be coordinated.
Chief designer Korolev died in 1966. It soon became evident that the lack of powerful propulsion units was a disadvantage in developing heavy-lift rockets. The N1 was initially designed for 75 tons. But a lunar spacecraft had to be able to handle 95 tons. Although the first stage of the American Saturn V only required five of the enormous F-1 propulsion units, the first stage of the N1 required 30 propulsion units, which were difficult to coordinate.
Korolev’s successor, Vasily Mishin, evidently lacked the political influence and skill to move the project forward quickly. In February of 1967 a new government issued a decision that prioritized the program and, significantly, now included the military, who completed the groundwork for the launch facilities.
However, when the launch ramp was finished, it could only be tested with a dummy. The first fully-equipped rocket wasn’t ready until 1968. It was to be launched for the first time on February 21, 1969, but it was a false start. The second attempt, three weeks before the U.S. moon landing, ended with an explosion that destroyed part of the launching system. Launches three and four in 1971 and 1972 were also failures. In 1974, the Soviet Union terminated work on the N1 and the moon landing program.
Problems also plagued the part of the program concerned with moon circumnavigations. Unmanned L1-series (later ‘Zond’) spacecraft launched by Proton rockets kept dropping out at various stages of their journey. Some rendezvous attempts between two Soyuz capsules in space were successful.
In September of 1968, Zond 5, unmanned but with two turtles on board, went around the moon, passing at a height of 1,960 kilometers on the far side, flew back to the Earth, and finally landed, not in Kazakhstan as planned, but in the Indian Ocean. The two animals survived only to be dissected 39 days later.
Zond 6 repeated this performance in November of 1968, but was beset by so many problems that a manned flight was deemed too risky. Sho
rtly before reentry the cabin depressurized, killing the turtles, fruit flies, and bacteria on board. If Zond 6 had been successful, they would still have attempted to beat the Americans at their (announced) manned circumnavigation of the moon in December of 1968. By then it was too late for the Russians, with Apollo 8 orbiting the moon in late December, followed by Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the satellite on July 20, 1969.
Even so, the efforts of the Soviet Union were not wholly unsuccessful—a fact that is sometimes overshadowed by the failures of the landing schedules. Luna 2 was the first man-made object on the moon, in September of 1959. A month later, Luna 3 sent the first photos of the far side of the moon. On January 31, 1966, the Luna 9 probe managed the first soft landing on the moon, in Oceanus Procellarum. The probe measured radiation levels on the surface and sent images to the Earth. The probes were all launched by rockets derived from R7 intercontinental missiles. Even today’s Soyuz rocket comes from this line.
The lunar orbiting program, which relied upon the Proton rocket, demonstrated successes with unmanned probes from 1970 onward. Russia’s Luna 16 (September 1970) was able to bring the first robotically collected moon rock back to the Earth. Luna 17 deposited the Lunokhod 1 rover—the first vehicle to explore another celestial body. From November 17, 1970, to October 4, 1971, it covered over ten kilometers, created 20,000 images, and analyzed 500 ground samples.
Even more successful was Lunokhod 2, which landed on January 15, 1973, aboard Luna 21 on the southern edge of the Le Monnier Crater in the transition zone between the Mare Serenitatis and the Taurus Mountains. It was controlled remotely and covered 39 kilometers on the moon in five months—a record that was only broken in 2014 by the Opportunity rover on Mars. Lunokhod 2—1.35m high, 2.2m long, and 1.6m wide—which drove across the landscape on eight wheels at 2-3km/h, explored the terrain, and shot over 80,000 suitable TV images.
An interesting fact: Lunokhod 2 now belongs to an American. Sotheby’s auction house auctioned it for $68,000, together with Luna 21 in December of 1993, as the first object not located on the Earth. The buyer was Richard Garriott, son of the U.S. astronaut Owen Garriott, who reputedly paid 30 million dollars to be a private astronaut on the ISS.
After the failures of the past, Russia certainly wants to be part of the next planned conquest of the moon. This was declared at the start of 2019 by the head of the rocket building company Energia, Vladimir Solntsev. But the nation does not want to enter into a space race. For example, Andrey Ionin from the Russian Academy of Cosmonautics denounced President Trump’s plans to put an astronaut on the moon by 2024, and described the program as being “motivated by domestic policy.” The Russian plans are also less ambitious. A four-sided, reusable spacecraft currently in development, called ‘Federatsiya’—which also replaces the Soyuz series—is due to launch on the new, super-heavy ‘Yenisei’ rocket in 2028 and set down cosmonauts on the moon for the first time in about 2031.
Where moon journeys meet Jade Hares
Not only Russian and U.S. satellites have reached the moon—it’s already had visitors from five other countries.
On April 10, 1993, the first satellite not built in the Soviet Union/Russia or the United States arrived on the moon: 200 kilograms of Japanese electronics that future visitors are likely to find on the edge of a crater located at 34° 18′ south and 55° 36′ east. The JAXA space agency launched the 200-kilogram ‘Hiten’ probe in preparation for later scientific missions. It only contained a sensor for measuring the concentration of dust between Earth and the moon. It released its sister probe ‘Hagoromo’ in orbit, but contact with this was soon lost.
Hiten was the precursor to a new race to the moon, which at the turn of the new millennium no longer involved just the two old superpowers, but also aspiring nations such as Japan, China, and India. The next visitor to the moon was the Lunar Prospector from the United States in 1999, but by this time, Europe was also lining up.
ESA’s SMART-1 reached lunar orbit in 2004 with the help of an ion thruster, and it touched down on Earth’s companion on schedule in 2006. The main goal of SMART-1 was to test a new type of propulsion, but the probe also analyzed the composition of the moon’s surface. Even its impact in the Lacus Excellentiae formation was used for this purpose: the probe was designed to hit so that the material thrown up by it could be studied via telescope from the Earth.
The age of poetic probe names began in 2009. Kaguya, a Japanese moon princess, Chang’e, a Chinese moon goddess, and Chandrayaan-1 (Hindi for ‘moon journey’) all reached the moon. Chandrayaan-1 is still in orbit today, but dropped a 29-kilogram Moon Impact Probe (MIP) that hit the surface on November 14, 2008, the birthday of former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, after having sent pictures and data during its descent.
The Japanese Kaguya probe delivered the first high-definition images from the moon, discovered evidence of moon caves, and measured the surface three-dimensionally. For example, it was the first time the depth of the Pythagoras Crater was measured at 4,800 meters.
Chang’e was the beginning of a whole series of successful Chinese lunar missions. Chang’e-2 visited the moon and Toutatis, a near-Earth asteroid. Chang’e-3 dropped the ‘Yutu’ Jade Hare (or Rabbit) rover on December 14, 2013. It only managed 114 meters and then refused to travel farther, but has remained in contact with the ground station for years. On January 3, 2019, China made space history when its Chang’e-4 set the Yutu-2 rover down on the far side of the moon, the first object to land on the side not facing Earth. In addition to cameras, radar, and spectrometers, it also has a Germany-made neutron and radiation dose detector on board.
In April of 2019, Israel also became a ‘moon nation’ with its Beresheet probe. The partially privately funded project, which among other things was to plant an Israeli flag on the moon, only managed a crash landing. But a successor, the Beresheet-2, is planned.
The moon will continue to have visitors. Chandrayaan-2 will come from India, and China is already planning Chang’e-5, with the intent of bringing back ground samples. South Korea wants to go to the moon for the first time with ‘KARL’ (Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter). And Germany is another: the PTScientists development team based in Berlin intends to deposit two rovers, using the ‘Alina’ lander, near the Apollo-17 landing site. Sponsors include Audi and Vodafone, and the rovers are currently called ‘Audi lunar quattros.’
Seas, mountains, rivers
Best you pack a moon mobile for our little tour. Make sure you have good tires, as the surface of the moon is almost completely covered in a meter-thick layer of dust and sand composed of ash-gray regolith, a material that has been pulverized by numerous meteorite impacts, caked together again, and then loaded with other elements by the solar winds.
We’ll begin at a ‘sea,’ a Mare MAH-ray (plural Maria MAH-ree-uh), as the dark lowlands are called, and which early astronomers mistook for oceans. Here the bottom consists of dark basalt, solidified lava that sprang from holes in the moon’s crust caused by asteroid impacts over three billion years ago.
The seas are bordered by highlands, as you’d expect, recognizable by the name ‘Terra.’ These are up to 4.5 billion years old and formed the original lunar crust. They are traversed by valleys (typically only a few hundred meters deep) and mountain ranges that rise to ten kilometers in height.
The lunar seas—their beauty, and how they were named
Mare Crisium
This wide plain presents its best side in the lunar morning sun.
Despite the name, these remarkable landscape features are clearly not open bodies of water. They are large basins, primarily impact craters, which were filled with cooling lava billions of years ago. Long before the invention of the telescope it was thought that these dark marks, visible to the naked eye from the Earth, were seas. But for about four hundred years we have conclusively known that they are solid ground. Waves are not breaking on a coast, and you won’t feel a breeze.
The Mare Crisium (‘Sea of Crises’) is the
largest self-contained ‘sea’ on the near side of the moon. It is roughly oval, 570 by 450 kilometers, with its longer axis extending east to west. Seen from the Earth, it lies on the eastern edge of the satellite. It appears to be higher than it is wide, because its proportions are distorted by the oblique angle. Thanks to its peripheral position and distinctive shape, it’s a good indicator of the phenomenon called libration, even without a telescope.
Libration is the slight oscillation of the moon, a ‘wagging’ motion during the course of the month. This means that we see 59 percent of the surface—only 41 percent is perpetually hidden. Due to libration, the details of the landscape also shift, which is particularly noticeable at the edges. Looking at the Mare Crisium, an experienced observer can tell which stage of libration our satellite is in.
When this oscillation brings the eastern edge more into view, the Mare Crisium is particularly easy to recognize. When the celestial body turns to the west, the sea shifts to the edge and appears significantly narrower. When there is a waxing moon in the evening sky, the libration favors the Mare Crisium. As the cycle progresses, the Sea of Crises is pushed closer and closer to the edge of our satellite.
The oval, clean-edged Mare Crisium throws a clear shadow along the night-day boundary of the thin, right-side crescent moon, like a dent. A day later, when it lies in the rays of the lunar morning light, the sea offers a spectacular view—especially through a telescope. Then it looks like an enormous, flooded crater, which it is. To the west, rugged mountain ranges rise, gleaming in the light.
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 29