The US plan to return to the moon after 52 years was declared a failure.
History textbooks in elementary school tell us that the United States sent a man to the moon for the first time in 1969 and took "one small step for the individual, one giant leap for humanity."
However, on January 9, less than 24 hours after the launch of the Peregrine Falcon lunar lander on behalf of the United States to return to the moon, the American Aerospace Robotics Corporation said it had abandoned its plan to land on the lunar surface.
Because the "peregrine falcon" is broken.
The first photo** sent back by the Peregrine Falcon, showing the wrinkles that appeared in the lander's insulation.
The Peregrine Lander went wrong as soon as it was released from the top of the rocket: the solar panels could not be aimed at the sun.
Subsequently, the technicians discovered that the most fundamental problem was the massive fuel leakage. At the moment, the Peregrine Falcon can only operate for 40 hours.
According to the original plan, if all goes well, the Peregrine Moon lander will reach the Moon on February 23.
The moon is 380,000 kilometers away from the earth. The good intentions of the Aerospace Robotics technicians "to get the lander as close to the moon as possible after a complete loss of kinetic energy" are clearly just words. Without the power of God, it is impossible to make this spacecraft, which carries the dream of the Americans for 52 years, travel in more than 40 days with 40 hours of power. That is, it is simply impossible for this lander to get close to the moon.
Peregrine falcon "failed, NASA paid for 1$0.8 billion was also lost.
The last time the United States landed on the moon was in December 1972. Astronauts Jean Cernan and Harrison Schmidt, who landed on the Apollo 17 lunar module, became the 11th and 12th humans to land on the moon. The United States returned to the moon after 52 years, and on the way to the moon, there was a problem. That's all the U.S. moon landing power? It's a bit of a surprise indeed!
What's even more embarrassing is that the lander also carried the ashes or DNA of about 330 people, including hair samples from former Washington, Kennedy and Eisenhower in the United States, and DNA from British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Washington has been dead for more than 200 years, and there are few hairs left, and now these few hairs that were sent into space are gone.
The end of the "Peregrine Falcon" lunar lander is to become a pile of unmanageable space junk, carrying the ashes of more than 300 people, floating in lonely space.
In fact, the technology of the lunar lander is not yet mature. Since the beginning of the 21st century, only three Chinese spacecraft and India's Chandrayaan-3 probe have successfully landed on the moon, while other landers from Israel, Russia, Japan and India have crashed. Many experts in the industry believe that the success rate of a spacecraft landing on the moon is equivalent to a coin toss. John Thornton, CEO of Aerospace Robotics, said in a previous interview that the probability of a successful landing is 50 percent. So why did the United States land on the moon in such a hurry? To say that they are taking a few more small steps for the sake of all humanity is to overestimate the Americans. What really makes the United States anxious is:China's manned landing on the moon is about to take place in the near future.
In May 2023, the U.S. media Fast Company reported on the status of China's lunar landing program under the headline "China is doubling down on its bet on the moon race" and said that "NASA seeks to increase investmentMake sure that the United States lands on the moon first
The United States panicked. However, China has never said that its goal is to go to the moon before the United States! After all, the United States has been there six times in the last century, and China is only moving at its own pace.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, China has carried out five successful unmanned lunar exploration missions, including Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2 around the moon, Chang'e-3 and Chang'e-4 landing on the front and back of the moon respectively, and Chang'e-5 sampling on the front side of the moon and bringing it back to Earth.
The Chang'e-6 mission is scheduled to be implemented around 2025 and is scheduled to be sampled and returned to the far side of the moon.
The Chang'e-7 mission is scheduled to be launched around 2026, planning to carry out environmental and resource exploration at the south pole of the moon and lay the foundation for the construction of an international lunar research station.
The Chang'e-8 program will be launched around 2028, when Chang'e-8 and Chang'e-7 will form the basic type of scientific research station at the south pole of the moon in China.
Before 2030, China plans to send astronauts to the surface of the moon to achieve China's first manned mission to the moon.
In order to accomplish this task, China's scientific researchers are developing the Long March 10 carrier rocket, a new-generation manned spacecraft, a lunar lander, a lunar landing suit, a manned lunar rover, and other equipment.
Chinese people have their own pace of doing things, which is down-to-earth and methodical. China really has no intention of competing with the United States. So the Americans will land on the moon in 2025 and China will go to the moon in 2030, and we are not in a hurry.
Big brother America, you go first!
China is not in a hurry, but the United States is in a hurry.
In 2012, the United States proposed the Artemis moon landing program, which was divided into two phases.
The first phase will be carried out from 2019 to 2024. Including the Artemis spaceship.
Artemis 1 is an unmanned test spacecraft that has been successfully launched.
Artemis 2 is scheduled for a manned circumlunar flight in November 2024.
Artemis 3 plans to use NASA contractor SpaceX's Starship landing system to achieve a manned landing at the moon's south pole by 2025.
The second phase of the Artemis lunar program will be carried out from 2025 to 2030 and will be on the moon for a long time.
However, the ideal is plump, and the reality is skinny.
China has already retrieved soil from the moon, but the United States is still on its way.
According to the scheduled plan, the launch of the first rocket and the first experimental manned spacecraft of the Artemis program should be completed in the first half of 2021. Unexpectedly, the SLS rocket was planned to be launched for the first time in 2016, and then it jumped 17 times in a row, and it was not until the end of 2022 that the first flight was successful. The launch of Artemis 2 is expected to be postponed beyond the end of 2024 due to problems with the batteries in the Orion manned capsule manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
The Starship rocket, which Artemis 3 is planned to use, has already set off two large fireworks. And their boss has recently been revealed to be a drug addict.
The Peregrine Falcon mission was part of NASA's Artemis moon landing program, and was originally intended to use an unmanned probe to land on the surface of the moon and explore the way.
In this round of competition for the moon landing, NASA has chosen more project outsourcing and sponsored a number of lunar landers developed by private companies such as the Peregrine Falcon. To a certain extent, handing over the grand project of landing on the moon to the private sector shows that it does not have much hope for its success. Leaving a more professional team and using a "private team" is the best evidence - the private company screwed up, it's their own business, not NASA's.
In addition to project outsourcing, another trick of the United States is to throw money at it. According to public data, China's total investment in lunar exploration is about 24 billion yuan (about 3.7 billion U.S. dollars), while the budget of the U.S. Artemis program is as high as 28 billion U.S. dollars. But I didn't expect that the money was spent, and the surface of the moon hadn't been touched yet. How can the United States, which wants to save face, not be in a hurry?
NASA is now in a hurry, rushing ducks to the shelves. Although the Peregrine Falcon failed this time, just next month, SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 rocket to launch the NOVA-C lunar lander for the American company Intuition Machine. And the dozen or so failures of the SLS and the two failures of the "Starship" before also make people wonder whether the United States has a definite grasp of it.
On the 9th local time, the consequences of the failure of the "Peregrine Falcon" finally hit the ground. NASA held a briefing to postpone the Artemis 2 manned mission around the moon scheduled for 2024 to September 2025 and the Artemis 3 manned lunar landing scheduled for 2025 to September 2026.
The Artemis program includes the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft, the Lunar Gateway space station, and the Starship lunar version of the lunar spacecraft. Among these systems, the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft are the most mature, the lunar portal space station has not yet been built, and the Starship lunar version has not yet started. Therefore, it is still unknown whether Artemis 2 and 3 will be launched according to the newly established timing.
The United States never imagined that it would be where it is today. In June 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 409-10 to pass a bill investigating China's "technology theft" against the United States. In November 1998, when the International Space Station was launched, China wanted to join the study, but the United States ignored it.
In 2011, the United States promulgated the Wolf Clause, which completely banned scientific exchanges between China and the United States. Unexpectedly, in just ten or twenty years, the Chinese who were still playing with mud back then were already about to achieve a manned landing on the moon.
What makes the United States even more anxious is that China's lunar landing program has a good appearance, announcing the design of the lunar lander, and also announcing the details of the fully reusable Long March 9 rocket.
Speaking of which, I believe everyone has a common question: did the United States really go to the moon in the last century?
The United States, which was able to achieve a manned landing on the moon half a century ago, is now unable to even send an unmanned probe to the moonIs the technology of the moon landing lost?
After the Apollo spacecraft went up, it was successful every time, and even the astronauts could directly communicate with ** and race on the moon ......Now, why do American experts say that the success rate of landing on the lunar surface is only 50%?
Even American netizens sighed: If only there was 1969 technology!
Regarding this issue, which has been debated in the ** world for more than 50 years, Brother Li does not comment here. I think that by 2030, when Chinese astronauts actually set foot on the lunar soil, all the answers will be revealed.