The Indian Space Research Organization—or ISRO—announced plans to launch a rover to
the moon sometime in July of 2019.
Not only will this be India’s first attempt to land on our big gray satellite, the mission
is going where no one has gone before: the moon’s south pole.
They won’t be alone for long though, because Jeff Bezos’s space company Blue Origin is
planning a trip to the lunar south pole as well.
But why the sudden interest, what could be down there that’s worth seeing?
Turns out, quite a bit, and it could be the key to a human colony in space.
Up to this point, only three other nations have landed probes on the moon: the former
Soviet Union, the United States, and China in that order.
An Israeli organization made an attempt in April of 2019, but their Beresheet lander’s
rocket failed in the final moments before touchdown, adding another tiny crater to the
moon’s face and leaving 4th place in the lunar rover race up for grabs.
So India’s ISRO is next to take their shot, launching their lander Vikram with the rover
Pragyan tucked away inside on a mission they’re calling Chandrayaan-2.
Yes, while this is their first attempt at landing on the moon, it’s not their first
mission to it.
In October of 2008, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 mission sent an orbiter to the moon.
It operated for 312 days, while a NASA instrument on board studied the moon’s surface.
In 2018, it was announced that those observations revealed what appears to be water ice on the
surface of the moon’s polar regions.
That’s what’s kicked off this race to the poles.
Now don’t go picturing massive ice sheets like what the Earth has… for now anyway.
The moon’s ice is sparse and probably mixed in with the regolith.
You may be wondering how ice could exist on the moon at all.
Truth be told, we’re not sure how it got there.
It could be from early volcanism or the ice could have been brought there by impactors.
But we know how it stays there.
At the poles, because the sun is edge on to the moon, the insides of some craters are
in permanent darkness.
And inside these craters, it cold.
The temperature never rises above -156 Celsius.
Since it’s forever dark down there, the ice doesn’t get the chance to evaporate,
and estimates predict there could be anywhere from 10 thousand to 100 million tons of ice
at the south pole.
That’s great news for us, because, and I don’t know if you’ve heard, but humans
need water to live.
So if we could extract it from the moon instead of bringing it with us from Earth, that could
save a lot of rocket fuel.
Speaking of rocket fuel, it just so happens that it’s made of Hydrogen and Oxygen.
Guess what has a lot of hydrogen and oxygen in it?
I really hope you said water or I’m failing at my job.
So given the enormous benefits of water ice, it’s starting to look like a lunar colony
at one of the poles would be ideal.
Well, except for the cold, and the fact that permanent shadows aren’t conducive to solar
power.
But that’s where the poles’ unique geometry with the sun comes into play again.
The same way some craters have permanent shadow, some mounds, crests, and crater rims at the
poles see near-constant daylight, some for more than 200 consecutive Earth days.
And some of these sunny spots are right next to craters that could contain ice.
One such place is the Shackleton Crater, and that’s Blue Origin’s targeted landing
spot.
Even if ISRO beats Blue Origin to the punch, Bezos’s company is still planning serious
polar exploration; they’ve unveiled a mock up of a lander capable of carrying four rovers
or an ascent stage that could lift human astronauts back off the surface of the moon.
So ISRO’s Chandrayaan-2 mission could be more than just a feather in the cap of India’s
space agency, it’ll be our first chance to get down in the regolith and see just how
abundant the ice is.
If the mission fails however like Beresheet did, Blue Origin could wind up being first
to the south pole, as well as the first private company to land on the moon.
No matter who gets there first confirming abundant ice at the south pole could be a
huge milestone in human history.
If it could sustain a lunar colony and produce rocket fuel, then the moon’s south pole
could be the first stop on a journey to Mars and beyond.
The Vikram lander is tentatively set to touchdown September 6th, 2019, and we will be watching
it very closely indeed.
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If we find enough ice at the south pole, would you be willing to live on the moon?
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