A lunar spacecraft is a spacecraft designed to fly to, land on or orbit the Moon. As of 2019, only two nations have sent such craft: the Soviet Union and the United States. The first successful manned mission was Apollo 11, which landed on the Moon in 1969. Russia’s Luna 9 sent back evidence that a different landing technique could be used successfully. More recent missions include China’s Change’e 3 probe, which became the first human-made object to soft-land on the far side of the moon in January 2019, as well as Israel’s Beresheet lander, which crashed during its attempt at a controlled landing in April 2019.
Lunar exploration has both scientific and nationalistic motivations; while scientists are interested in learning more about our nearest celestial neighbor and gaining a better understanding of Earth’s place in the universe, countries also want to demonstrate their technological prowess by being able to send humans or robotic probes to another world.
The Moon is an important destination for future exploration because it can serve as a proving ground for technologies and operations needed for longer-term missions to more distant targets like Mars. It is also relatively close and accessible compared to other potential destinations like asteroids or planets beyond our solar system, making it an ideal place to test new technologies that could be used on these more challenging missions. Additionally, resources obtained from the Moon (such as water ice) could be used to support future crewsed missions.
There are many challenges associated with Lunar exploration, chief among them being the radiation environment near the surface of the moon. This is caused by high levels of charged particles emitted from the Sun known as solar wind; when these interact with lunar soil they create a dangerous soup of charged particles known as “space weather”. This space weather can damage equipment and endanger any astronauts present; thus extensive shielding would be required for any crewed missions. Additionally, there is no atmosphere on the moon which means that there is no protection from meteorites; any impact event large enough could potentially destroy whatever equipment or structures are present. Finally, operating in vacuum presents its own set of problems not faced by terrestrial engineers – everything must be designed taking into account things like outgassing (the release of gasses trapped inside materials due to reduced pressure), offgassing (the release of volatile chemicals used in manufacturing processes) and micrometeorite impacts.”