Different Kind of Moon Missions

Different Kind of Moon Missions

Subject : Science and technology

Concept :

• The Chandrayaan-3 mission is one of the several space missions lined up to go to the moon, including Russia’s Luna 25 mission and NASA’s Artemis II.

Different kinds of moon missions:

Flybys:

• These are the missions in which the spacecraft passed near the Moon but did not get into an orbit around it.
• These were either designed to study the Moon from a distance or were on their way to some other planetary body or deep space exploration and happened to pass by the celestial body.
• Examples of flyby missions were Pioneer 3 and 4 by the United States and Luna 3 of the then USSR.

Orbiters:

• These were spacecraft that were designed to get into a lunar orbit and carry out prolonged studies of the Moon’s surface and atmosphere.
• India’s Chandrayaan-1 was an Orbiter.
• Orbiter missions are the most common way to study a planetary body.
• So far, landings have been possible only on the Moon, Mars and Venus.
• All other planetary bodies have been studied through orbiter or flyby missions.

Impact Mission:

• These are an extension of Orbiter missions.
• While the main spacecraft keeps going around the Moon, one or more instruments on board make an uncontrolled landing on the lunar surface.
• They get destroyed after the impact, but still send some useful information about the Moon while on their way.
• One of the instruments on Chandrayaan-1, called Moon Impact Probe, or MIP, was also made to crash land on the Moon’s surface in a similar way.

Landers:

• These missions involve the soft landing of the spacecraft on the Moon.
• The first landing on the moon was accomplished on January 31, 1966, by the Luna 9 spacecraft of the then USSR.

Rovers:

• These are an extension of the lander missions.
• Rovers are special wheeled payloads on the lander that can detach themselves from the spacecraft and move around on the moon’s surface, collecting very useful information that instruments within the lander would not be able to obtain.
• The rover onboard Vikram lander in the Chandrayaan-2 mission was called Pragyaan.

Human missions:

• These involve the landing of astronauts on the moon’s surface.
• So far only NASA of the United States has been able to land human beings on the moon.
• So far, six teams of two astronauts each have landed on the moon, all between 1969 and 1972.
• After that, no attempt has been made to land on the Moon.
• But with NASA’s Artemis III, currently planned for 2025, humanity is set to once again to the lunar surface in more than 50 years.