Earth's Moon

Exploring Earth's Moon

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

That was excellent advice for those sending spacecraft to Earth's moon during the early Space Age. The first seven probes sent by the United States and Soviet Union to explore the moon never made it because of launch failures. It was not until the 11th mission, the Soviet Luna 2, that there was a full success, with the probe intentionally slamming into the lunar surface.

Exploring Earth's moon is not easy. In more than half a century of exploration, the success rate is just above 60 percent:

Mission Outcome Number of Missions Success Rate
Successes 56 53.8%
Partial Successes 7 6.7%
Failures 41 39.4%
TOTAL: 104 100%

The first decade or so was the most difficult period. Between the launch of the first lunar probe, Pioneer 0, in August 1958 and the landing of Apollo 12 on the moon in November 1969, the two superpowers mounted 69 missions with 26 successes, 5 partial successes, and 38 failures. Launch vehicle failure was a frequent problem. Spacecraft were also placed in the wrong orbit, failed mysteriously in flight, and crashed into the surface when they should have soft landed.

Since the 1970s, the success rate has increased significantly, with a mere 3 failures against 29 successes and 2 partial successes. One of those missions was the "successful failure" of Apollo 13, whose crew returned safely to Earth after aborting its planned lunar landing. The reliability of rockets has improved greatly over the past four decades, with only one launch failure since 1970.

A wide variety of vehicles has been sent to the moon, including orbiters, landers and penetrators. These missions have mapped the surface in fine detail, returned rocks and soil samples for analysis on Earth, and crashed into the moon to search for water.

The pinnacle of lunar exploration was the Apollo program, which landed six pairs of astronauts on the moon between 1969 and 1972. The astronauts collected hundreds of pounds of moon rockets, explored large areas of the surface, and set up a series of experiments, some of which still work today. The Apollo missions also launched small sub-satellites into orbit and crashed Saturn V upper stages into the surface to measure seismic activity.

Most spacecraft have been sent to Earth's moon by the United States and Soviet Union. It was not until 1990 that this lock was broken by Japan, which sent its Hiten probe to the moon. Since that time, China, India, and the European Space Agency have sent spacecraft to Earth's moon.

Although the exploration of Earth's moon has been dominated by governments, private companies are beginning to get into the act. Twenty-six teams are competing to win the Google Lunar X Prize, a $30 million competition to land a private lunar rover on the surface and travel 500 meters.

The Rocket City Space Pioneers of Huntsville is one of the teams competing for the prize. The team is led by Tim Pickens and backed by Dynetics. The space pioneers have assembled an experienced team to win the prize, including Teledyne Brown Engineering, Draper Laboratory, Andrews Space, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, Moog, Huntsville Center for Technology, and Analytical Mechanics Associates.

Links

Google Lunar X Prize

NASA lunar exploration

 

 

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