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Space agencies are discussing sending people to the moon and establishing the first colonies. It may take another 10 years before a real landing, but technologies for extracting water, processing regolith, and creating residential modules are no longer science fiction.
According to updated plans, in 2025, NASA, together with commercial companies and international partners, including ESA, JAXA and CSA, plans to land the first woman and man on the moon as part of the Artemis program. This step for the agency, in contrast to the one-off Apollo missions in the 2030th century, is the beginning of a sustainable human presence on the moon. China and our country, within the framework of the ILRS initiative, are striving for the same – as expected, the first astronauts on the Earth satellite will appear after XNUMX. Both programs see the creation of a lunar base as the ultimate goal, which can become the starting point for long-distance flights into space.
New race for the moon
In 2020, NASA unveiled the Artemis multi-stage plan, named after Artemis, goddess of the hunt, fertility, and the moon. The program starts with the participation of robots (the first launch is scheduled for February 2022). First, two missions will deliver science payloads to the moon, including the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) lunar rover. In 2025, the stage with the participation of people will begin. Four people will fly on the Orion spacecraft to the Gateway lunar space station (similar to the ISS, the main contractor for the delivery of cargo will be Elon Musk’s SpaceX).
After that, people will finally land on the surface of the satellite and stay there for a week. They will set up a base camp, and by 2028 a small Lunar Surface Asset station will appear on the Moon – the first base with a permanent crew.
NASA’s main competitor in the lunar race is our country and China with the joint IRLS (International Lunar Research Station) program. The roadmap was presented by Roscosmos and the Chinese National Space Administration in the summer of 2021 at the GLEX forum.
There are 14 missions planned under IRLS. In 2021, the exploration phase began, by 2025 scientists will choose a site for the lunar base, the construction of which will take place from 2026 to 2035, and from 2036 full-fledged work will begin with the participation of people. The base, like NASA, will be supported by an orbital station in the circumlunar space, through which communication will take place between the Earth and its natural satellite.
Construction of the first bases
NASA plans for the development of the planet are currently associated with an area in the vicinity of the Shackleton crater at the South Pole of the Moon with a diameter of 20,9 km and a depth of 4,2 km. The VIPER lunar rover will begin research. He will look for the resources that the colony will need, primarily water. When scientists receive data from the rover, they will be able to adjust their plans.
Before creating a full-fledged Lunar Surface Asset, NASA plans to organize a small Artemis Base Camp, which will consist of only three parts.
- Double leaky all-terrain vehicle (Lunar Terrain Vehicle). Astronauts will be able to move in it for short distances (up to 20 km) in the new Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit spacesuits.
- A high-tech van, which is called the “mobile habitable platform” (Habitable Mobility Platform). It will be airtight, with life support systems. People will be able to spend up to 45 days in it. Designed for long trips outside the camp.
- A fixed platform (Foundation Surface Habitat) that can accommodate up to four astronauts to live on the moon for several months.
With each new mission, the base camp will grow. The final form is not defined – it depends on technologies and research results. The Lunar Surface Asset initiative involves excavation and energy production, which means the placement of equipment, solar panels and reactors.
The camp and its surroundings will have many research assistant robots, similar to the miniature Micro-Nova hopper, which is being developed by the University of Arizona, and special equipment like the RASSOR excavator robot, which can dig in conditions close to zero gravity. The Russian-Chinese program also relies on swarms of mini-robots (groups of machines united by one task), jumping robots, and planetary rovers.
Over time, a controlled truck may appear in the base camp, which will deliver goods all over the moon. The European Space Agency (ESA) is developing a multifunctional cargo module that will be able to de-orbit up to 1,5 tons of cargo (the study phase will end in 2022). The plans include the installation of a radio telescope in the “backyard”, NASA writes, referring to the far side of the moon. They will be controlled remotely.
There are other ideas on how to develop infrastructure on the Moon – they relate to logistics issues. So, in October 2021, a group of scientists from the International Space University proposed using the reusable SpaceX Lunar Starship, developed by Elon Musk, and its HLS landing system as the foundation of the lunar base. The advantage of the project is that it will allow astronauts to relatively quickly (in 180 days) deploy a full-fledged habitation module with a volume of 2500 m³ (2,5 times the size of the ISS).
British architects Foster + Partners turned to 3D printing, which was tested on the ISS in 2014: the astronauts were sent by e-mail a design of the socket wrench, which they printed on the printer. On the Moon, regolith, soil from the surface of the satellite, can become a material for printing. Technologies already allow printing objects in zero gravity, there are also lasers that can be installed on lunar rovers and create universal elements for future structures from molten regolith.
It is possible that by 2050 there will be not only bases on the surface, but also underground stations. In 2010, at the Lunar Conference in Beijing, a group of scientists presented a plan for a multi-module station with a science center and a greenhouse for growing vegetables and grains. The regolith layer above the modules will protect people from solar radiation. The plan may be easier to implement if the station is built in caves and lava tubes that already exist on the Moon, which arose there as a result of ancient volcanic activity.
One such cave was discovered in 2017 by the Japanese SELENE apparatus; it was formed 3,5 billion years ago, has a height of 100 m and a depth of 50 km. The European Space Agency plans to explore other promising caves in the future with a balloon probe and a swarm of robots.
The Wall Street Journal also predicts the construction of roads (“basic technology of mankind”), but this is likely to happen only in decades.
Mining
Launching 1 kg of materials into low Earth orbit costs an average of $10 thousand. NASA estimated the cost of the Artemis program until 2025 at $93 billion, one launch of the Orion rocket from Earth will cost $4,1 billion. Therefore, for sustainable development on the Moon, the bases must be close to self-sufficiency.
So, within the framework of existing programs, they are discussing the concept of “in situ resource utilisation” (ISRU) – the extraction of resources on the spot. The first thing that will be needed on the Moon, and that, undoubtedly, is there, is water, energy and building materials.
Water
With the colonization of the moon, water will become a key resource: it can be used for drinking, irrigation in greenhouses, and also split into hydrogen and oxygen for use as fuel and for life support.
Shackleton Crater at the Moon’s South Pole was not chosen by chance to host the station. Scientists believe that it contains water in the form of ice. The hypothesis was indirectly confirmed by data from the Indian orbiter Chandrayaan-1, which detected ice in 40 craters 2–15 km in diameter, and data from Chandrayaan-2. The latter found ice mixed with soil in the Piri craters at the North Pole and Cabeo near the South Pole.
A crew of four needs a tiny amount of water—a few tens of tons a year, according to George Sawers, an aeronaut scientist at the Colorado School of Mines. At the poles of the moon, according to recent data, more than 600 million tons of water can be stored.
True, this water must first be obtained. In the craters, the temperature drops to -250 °C, so it will take a lot of energy to melt the ice. To simplify the process, giant mirrors located around the perimeter of the crater can direct sunlight to the bottom, after which the astronauts will need to collect either water vapor or soft soil mixed with ice. The condensed water will be sent to a processing plant and split into hydrogen and oxygen. Also, ice can be transported to the camp and melted in tanks.
Energy
In its program, NASA assigns a large role to the Sun. At the South Pole, there may be peaks of eternal light that will ensure the continuous operation of solar panels. However, such spots are likely to be few in number, so scientists are thinking about how to design the Artemis systems for extremely cold lunar nights (−170 °C). They come once in a synodic month (the time from one new moon to another) and last, like a lunar day, 14 Earth days (but at certain points on the poles they can last less – five days).
NASA is working with the US Department of Energy to consider another permanent source of energy. Scientists have developed a compact ground-based uranium-based power unit with a capacity of 10 kW – enough to power several households on Earth, the agency writes. The small power plant will be able to power the elements of the camp for 10 years and will provide more flexibility in mission planning.
Regolith
If ice is still unavailable for fuel production, it will be possible to use the surface layer of loose lunar soil – regolith – to obtain water and other resources. It contains silica and metal oxides, and is 43% oxygen; according to NASA, 5% from water, another 5% from volatile substances, including methane, ammonia, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Regolith is being considered as a potential building material for 3D printers that the first colonists might bring with them.
In the future, regolith can become a source of other resources, such as helium-3 (3He), which hits the satellite with the solar wind and accumulates over billions of years. It can be used as fuel in thermonuclear reactors. On Earth, it is rare and costs $16,6 million per kg. In the lunar regolith, according to rough estimates, there are about 1,1 million tons of it – enough to provide our planet with electricity for 10 thousand years. There are already plans to deliver 300 kg of the isotope to Earth by 2028.
Much research has been devoted to how to isolate metals, water, and oxygen from regolith. But in addition to the potential benefits, it also carries obvious harm. Regolith, which is similar in structure to sand, under low gravity (1,62 m/s² on the Moon versus 9,8 m/s² on Earth) easily breaks away from the surface from any impact and poses a danger to equipment and astronauts. Given that people plan to regularly land on the moon in the same places, scientists are looking for a way to clear the camp area. One solution could be the deep sintering of regolith with other materials and the creation of landing platforms on its basis. The same technology can be further used in the construction of roads.
Agriculture
In conditions of limited resources, it is most effective to create closed ecosystems in which plants will process organic waste and convert carbon dioxide into oxygen. Such a system called “Moon Palace” is already being tested by Chinese scientists. In 2018, they completed an experiment in which two groups of students grew cereals (including wheat), vegetables, strawberries, and mealworms for 370 days as a source of protein and ate a 4-day, 2900-calorie diet. In short, the ecosystem is able to support a comfortable life for the crew in a closed environment for a long time.
Space-grown lettuce and other greens are already being eaten on the ISS. NASA has a Veggie program and similar ones that study how the absence of gravity affects plant growth and genetics. The long-term challenge is to understand how to grow crops in regolith. If this succeeds, small fruit trees may appear on the Moon.
What happens after colonization?
The basic goals of colonization will be the study of lunar topography, geomorphology, chemistry, geology and the possibility of observing space. Many technologies that are being tested in relation to lunar programs will also find application on our planet: in energy, construction, transport, and resource extraction.
With cities and ecosystems on the Moon that vaguely resemble those shown in Ad Astra, humanity will likely be ready for the next step. One of the ideas of the Artemis program is to turn the moon into a testing ground for technology and simulate the upcoming flight to Mars. Then the lunar bases will become the starting point for missions to the Red Planet – after all, it will cost many times less than launching from Earth.