Walking the Moon Since the 1960s

Within 12 years after the launch of the first satellite Sputnik, in 1969, the Americans succeeded in putting human on the Moon’s surface. The famous quote of the first visitor to the Moon Neil Armstrong was ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. However, the American Apollo programme was the outcome of the ‘Sputnik shock’. This shock was traumatic to the Americans who believed that if the Soviets could put a satellite into orbit, then they could do same with nuclear weapons. They wanted to disprove the perception that the Americans were techni­cally inferior and hence potentially weaker than the Soviets. Apollo demonstrated the technological supremacy of the Americans to the world. Interestingly, further to initial few flights of Apollo, nothing much happened, and in fact last three Apollo flights were cancelled. This mainly happened because there was no clarity of agenda. The financial costs involved were sky-scraping. ‘The lesson of Apollo is simple: without a strategic purpose, manned space flight is not deemed sufficiently important to warrant the kind of government resource investment necessary for success’ [1].

Apollo programme carried Americans to the Moon in 1969-1972. Also, few unmanned probes visited the Moon during the same time period. All these manned and unmanned visits collected significant scientific data but not sufficient enough to answer many questions starting from the evolution of the Moon, the possibility of availability of the water over the Moon and about the nature and quantum of mineral deposits over the Moon. The challenge of reaching the Moon (either manned visit or otherwise) was itself so immense that studying the Moon became part II of the story.

Now, in the twenty-flrst century, Moon has regained the attention of space scientists, rocket engineers and policymakers. Mankind has realised that the natural resources on the surface of the Earth are finite in nature and hence has started tapping at other planets for the same. Naturally, Moon becomes the best option being the closest satellite of the Earth, and it has been visited by humans in the past. However, the knowledge, expertise and capabilities in regard to basic space technologies to send a satellite into the space is available with very few states, and to reach the Moon requires much better understanding of rocket science and resources. Hence, only the big three from Asia are actually found attempting to conquer the Moon, while few others have expressed ambitions to do so.

Modern-day space exploration could be broadly divided into two major seg­ments: one, putting the satellites either in low, medium or geostationary (36,000 km above Earth’s surface) orbits and two, reaching to the planets, what is commonly known as the ‘deep space missions’. Moon the nearest satellite to the Earth is 387 400 km away from the Earth. Amongst the space players, there is a sharp contrast in terms of capabilities. The Iranians can reach the low Earth orbit now, while the Americans had reached the Moon four decades back. In deep space arena, Japan, China and India are relatively late bloomers, but during last few years, they have shown remarkable growth.