The United States has launched a "Vulcan Centaur" rocket, carrying a "Peregrine Falcon" lunar lander, which is the first attempt by the United States to return to the moon in 52 years, and the first time that the private sector has undertaken this mission, and is expected to achieve a soft landing on the moon on February 23. However, the mission could end in failure, as the lander's propulsion system malfunctioned, resulting in a massive propellant leak with only a 50% chance of a successful landing. The private company said the launch was to explore the development of the industry as a whole, not to accomplish a specific task.
This argument sounds euphemistic, but it is actually an admission that the lander may not be able to reach the moon. At present, only four countries, the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and India, have successfully landed on the moon, and since the beginning of the 21st century, only Chinese and Indian probes have successfully landed on the moon, and other countries have failed to land on the moon. Although the United States started its plan to return to the moon, it was preempted by India.
One might argue that the mission was run by a private company and had nothing to do with NASA, and that the failure was understandable. But in fact, the Peregrine Falcon mission is part of NASA's Lunar Commercial Launch Services Program and Artemis Lunar Landing Program, with which NASA and the private company signed a contract$0.8 billion in contracts. The New York Times also noted that the failure has raised questions about NASA's strategy of relying on private companies to send scientific experiments to the moon. In this outsourcing model, NASA is to save costs and avoid pressure. If it succeeds, it is an achievement of the United States, and if it fails, it is a risk for the private sector, and it has nothing to do with NASA. When the news of the possible failure of the mission broke, NASA quickly announced that it would postpone the manned mission around the moon to September 2025 and the manned lunar landing plan to September 2026, and said that it was not afraid of China landing on the moon first.
In fact, the U.S. manned lunar landing program has been postponed several times, and the U.S. "Artemis program" is divided into three steps, the first step is to complete an unmanned flight around the moon in 2022, the second step is to complete a manned flight around the moon in 2024, and the third step is to complete a manned landing on the moon by the end of 2025. But at the moment, NASA has only completed the first step, and both the second and third steps are facing technical and financial difficulties. NASA admits that there are many problems with the Artemis program, such as the "Space Launch System" of the large rocket that is badly damaged and needs to be repaired; The materials of the Orion spacecraft were eroded and the design was flawed; On top of that, the landing system has not been successfully tested, and NASA is pinning its hopes on the SpaceX "Starship" lander, but last year the two test flights of the Starship were **. In this case, NASA can only repeatedly postpone the manned lunar landing program.
In addition to technological problems, the United States also faces a more fundamental problem, which is "deindustrialization". Manufacturing in the United States is not as good as it used to be, and Boeing's airplanes are an example of this. The entire U.S. system no longer supports its rapid realization of such ambitious plans. How ironic it is that the United States completed the Apollo moon landing program more than 50 years ago and achieved the first human landing on the moon, but more than 50 years later, the United States has not even been able to send a lander to the moon.