The Moon Still Beckons... to Russia, Anyway: Analysis

The moon disappeared from NASA's radar screen in January 2010, when the Obama White House canceled the Bush-era Constellation program and its plan to return to the lunar surface by 2020. The space agency today is focused on privatizing cargo and astronaut transport to the International Space Station, then sending explorers to nearby asteroids in the late 2020s. But the moon just won't go away. Our nearest cosmic companion keeps popping up in discussions of where robots?and humans?should head next in space.

In the last 10 years, the U.S., Japan, Europe, India, and China have resumed the robotic exploration of the moon. Both China and Japan have expressed interest in returning human explorers there, with China announcing late last year a series of technological steps leading to a manned lunar mission.

Just this week, NASA itself unveiled a robot to prospect for lunar water ice and oxygen. (As I noted this week, tapping those kinds of resources could be a bonanza for future explorers by drastically reducing mission costs or supplying life-support needs at an astronaut outpost.) The Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction, or RESOLVE, is a four-wheeled drill rig, the size of a golf cart. Once safely on the moon, RESOLVE will drill for the ice deposits already spotted from orbiting sensors, and process lunar rocks and soil to release oxygen. RESOLVE will start field trials in July on lava beds outside Hilo, Hawaii.

But while NASA is thinking about lunar robots, Russia is thinking bigger. At the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) in Washington last month, Russian space agency head Vladimir Popovkin confirmed that Russia has long-range plans to send cosmonauts to the moon. "We're not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago," he said. "We're talking about establishing permanent bases."

This isn't the first time we've heard Russia's space agency talk about a moon base. In March, a leaked technology road map document from Roscosmos (that nation's federal space agency) suggested that the country could establish a cosmonaut outpost there soon after 2025. Speaking in April 2011 on the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first orbital flight, then-prime minister Vladimir Putin said, "Russia should not limit itself to the role of an international space ferryman. We need to increase our presence on the global space market."

Russian interest in the moon goes back half a century or more. Locked in a Cold War space race with the U.S., Russia was first to image the lunar far side, first to send a probe to strike the moon, first to soft-land a robot spacecraft there, and the first to return a robot sampling spacecraft from the lunar surface. But by the mid-1970s, having lost the manned moon race to Apollo and running short of cash, the Soviets left the lunar arena.

Now, though, Russia is looking back to the moon as a way to remain a major player in space. Putin's "ferryman" comment refers to the fact that Russia provides all the crew transportation to the ISS, and will do so for the next five years. But its transport monopoly could end by 2017, when the U.S. hopes to restore its own astronaut launch capability. With NASA focused on nearby asteroids and Mars, Russia may be trying to seize opportunity on our natural satellite, just three days from Earth.

Using today's technology to update its current rockets and Soyuz, Russia might assemble a lunar lander and return craft in Earth orbit. Russia has mentioned the European Space Agency (ESA) as a possible partner in lunar exploration; Roscosmos and ESA have collaborated on building ISS hardware, and ESA astronauts have long flown on Russian Soyuz craft to Mir and the International Space Station. Lunar exploration could give Russia a more prominent role than it has played in the U.S.-led ISS consortium.

Waiting on the moon is a nearly unexplored wilderness of immense scientific interest, with tempting water resources and plentiful oxygen to be mined from lunar rocks and soil. The South Pole-Aitken basin, a huge, 2600-km (1600 mi) wide asteroid impact crater (big enough to swallow half of China), may be four billion years old, preserving rocks from the most violent chapters in moon?Earth history. Water ice is present in some of the shadowed craters near the moon's south pole; getting at it could support a cosmonaut outpost and provide cheap fuel for return trips. For Russia, the moon seems to be an obvious land of opportunity.

Having heard announcements like these from Russia before, however, I'm skeptical they will follow through. The country is so strapped for cash that its space program can't assure the quality and reliability of its current rockets, let alone build a lunar craft. Just last year, a Russian probe launched to explore the Martian moons suffered a failure after launch and plunged ignominiously back into our atmosphere. I'll believe in Russia's future on the moon when real rubles put real rockets on the launch pad.

Tom Jones is a veteran astronaut, planetary scientist, and author of Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir.

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