The game to return to the Moon restarts: SpaceX is late, outsiders enter the field
The module for landing on our satellite is still missing, while Musk's company seems more interested in Mars. And, meanwhile, the Chinese are breathing down NASA's neck
President Trump wants the US to get its feet on the Moon by 2029, with the Artemis programme, but almost all analysts agree that it's just not possible. The danger Trump sees is that the Chinese will get there first, and that's a real danger, plus 20 January 2029 is the end of Trump's term and what happens after that will be seen. So the date is set, but completely unrealistic.
The situation is complicated and, to some extent, very strange: the US has the rocket to go all the way to the Moon, to be optimistic, but not the vehicle to descend and get the astronauts down; the Chinese, on the other hand, probably have everything but the rocket powerful enough to get the taikonauts, the Chinese astronauts, to the Moon; getting them down seems easier for them. Both, however, want to get to the Moon's South Pole because of the alleged, but quite safe, deposits of frozen water at the bottom of the lunar craters there.
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The Artemis project, at least for the part related to the main carrier rocket that will carry astronauts and materials by the tonne to the Moon, had been entrusted to SpaceX, owned by Elon Musk, which, however, is considerably behind schedule and, above all, has set up a fascinating, but heavy, complex and costly project. NASA now feels insecure, thank goodness, say many, and reopens the game through the mouth of its interim CEO, Sean Duffy, who wants a Plan B to get to the Moon. He told two important and followed American television stations: CNBC and Fox News.
Little competition, slow development
We wrote 'thank goodness' earlier because entrusting everything to a single company, however important, solid and having shown exceptional progress in the space field, had seemed a gamble to many, what in engineering is called creating a 'single point of failure'.
To put things in order: now it is Artemis II, Nasa's SLS rocket, an upgraded version of the old 1990s rocket for the Shuttle, is ready and will take Nasa's Orion capsule around the Moon in 2026, as in the Apollo programme or in Verne's book, but no one will go down this time.
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