The Daily - A New Race to the Moon

Episode Date: August 28, 2023

Last week, India landed its spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the moon, becoming the first country to land such a craft near the south pole, where scientists believe vital reserves of water could be found frozen. The landing also revealed just how much the international space race has changed.Kenneth Chang, a science reporter for The Times, explains why a new set of players are dominating the space race and what is motivating their groundbreaking missions to the moon.Guest: Kenneth Chang, a science reporter for The New York Times.Background reading: India became the first country to get a craft to the lunar south polar region in one piece, adding to the achievements of its homegrown space program.At the moon’s south pole, a quest for ice.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Last week, when India landed a spacecraft on the moon, it revealed just how much the international space race has changed. Today, I speak with my colleague, Kenneth Chang, about why a new set of players is dominating that race, and what is motivating their groundbreaking missions to the moon. It's Monday, August 28th. Ken, I wonder if you can just describe the t-shirt you're wearing. I just happened to be wearing my NASA t-shirt.

It was from 2018 when it was the sixth anniversary of NASA. You just happened to be wearing that? Yeah. I wasn't even looking. Is it possible your NASA t-shirt is in very frequent circulation on your body? I probably should change more often, yes. Ken, I want to start by asking you to describe this moment that unfolded out there in space last week. India had this robotic space probe in orbit around the moon.

around the moon. And last week, it took the momentous last step in attempting to land it on the moon near the South Pole. After arriving in lunar orbit, it's sort of been slowly changing its orbit to get ready for this landing. And on what was Wednesday morning for me, it started firing its engines for the last time. And on what was Wednesday morning for me, it started firing its engines for the last time. At this point, it's slowing down and falling to the moon. There's no turning back now. It either has to land or crash. There's no other choice.

A very good evening to all of you. We at ISRO welcome you to the live coverage of India's prestigious Chandrayaan-3 missions landing event on the lunar surface. So the Indian Space Agency is making this live stream broadcast of the landing. So we're seeing everyone in the control room. The scientists here at ISTRAC are glued to their systems, analyzing all sorts of complex data. And like millions of people around the world, I was watching it on my computer, and they were now seeing each step along the way. Currently, only two engines are now being fired. The engines are firing. We are nearly at zero velocity.

It's velocity, it's descent rate. We were hovering and now we are approaching the moon's surface. It continues to descend. We can see the Honorable Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi ji, who is here to encourage us. Prime Minister Modi of India pops up on the screen. He's in South Africa for a meeting, but he wants to be there at least virtually during this historic event. And we are approaching the vertical descent phase two. It slows down.

It stops for a moment at a height of 150 meters just for last minute checks. And it descends the remaining 150 meters. India is at the brink of creating history as we all await with bated breath to witness the landing on moon's south polar region. And. And all of a sudden there was cheering breaking out in Mission Control. Modi's waving his Indian flag. Sir, we have achieved soft landing on the moon.

India is on the moon. And it's one part pure exuberance and joy, and one part relief. I request our honorable Prime Minister to address us and bless us. Thank you, sir. India's successful moon mission

is not just India's alone. India was the first country to successfully land near the South Pole of the Moon. This success belongs to all of humanity. Ken, this is clearly an accomplishment. But with all due respect to India, this was a robotic spacecraft landing on the moon 50 years after the United States did something arguably much harder,

which is put humans on the moon. So why is India even undertaking this mission now? And why is it being treated as such a big moment? So you're right. This doesn't compare to what NASA did during the space program when I was young. But it's a completely different space race. Now it's everyone, including India, wanting to go to the moon. And they're going to a completely different part of the moon. It's near the South Pole. And that offers a whole new range of opportunities and scientific mysteries that no one has tried to answer yet. Explain that. Why is this such a different kind of competition

to get to the moon and a different set of opportunities? So NASA wrapped up its Apollo moon landings in 1972. And one of the amazing things they did was bring back rocks and dirt from the moon. And that's been a treasure trove for scientists to understand the history of the solar system. But after that, people sort of felt, the Moon, we've been there, we've done that, we've brought back the rocks and dirt, we've basically learned everything that we need to know about the Moon. And so NASA and planetary scientists want something new. So they are looking toward Mars, to Venus. They sent the Voyager spacecraft that went past Jupiter and Saturn and produced all these amazing new images of these new

planets. And for decades, people kind of just overlooked the Moon. It was just something that you looked up at night and perhaps noticed in some craters, but it had been forgotten scientifically. But this started to change in the mid-1990s. There were radar images taken by the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. They bounced radar signals off the moon. And there were certain places, particularly in the polar regions, where the reflections seemed particularly bright, as if there was something shiny, almost like ice at the bottom of this crater.

But there was no way to tell from the radar why these parts were so shiny. And this just continued as a mystery until there was one scientist named Alan Binder. until there was one scientist named Alan Binder. He had this proposal for sending a dirt-cheap spacecraft to the moon. It was an orbiter, it didn't land. And it was called Lunar Prospector. And he had to fight the NASA leadership because, like everyone else,

NASA was looking to do things farther out in the solar system. The moon would still have been there, done that. But Alan Binder finally won funding to do lunar prospector. It orbited the moon. And it was able to measure hydrogen. Large amounts of hydrogen in certain parts of the moon. And for the first time, the pieces fit together. These places corresponded to where the scientists had previously seen the shiny spots on the moon. And why is that important?

Hydrogen, the most likely form that this could be in, was H2O, water, which is two hydrogens and one oxygen. And it's important as at the poles because it's colder at the North and South Pole. And these spots look to be at the bottom of these deep craters. And the sun never shines at the bottom of these deep craters, and the sun never shines at the bottom of these craters. So these are literally some of the coldest places in the solar system, a few degrees above absolute zero. So if ice ever formed in these craters, they would never have a chance to melt. And so the ice at the bottom of these craters, you can almost think of it as the freezer compartment of the solar system,

where the layers of frost slowly layered on top of each other over four and a half billion years. Got it. So suddenly, all these pieces, as you say, that are fitting together, the shiny images, the cold temperatures, the hydrogen, suggest that there might be water, ice water, on the Moon. And why would that be so important? Because now this makes this place a much more appealing place to send astronauts. One, there's new scientific mysteries

to be discovered here. How did this ice get here? What form is it in? And two, water is a crucial resource for astronauts. And water is really heavy, so you don't want to be sending all of it from Earth all the time. So if it's there at the moon already, that makes setting up a lunar base that much easier. And you can do other things with water. You can split it apart into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen, that's air for people to breathe. And the hydrogen, you can use it as fuel for rockets or for fuel cells to power a lunar base.

So suddenly, in this discovery that there might be water on the moon, you're saying scientists, researchers are seeing the possibility of maybe living on the moon or having much longer stays on the moon because water would power all the things that would be there, the machines, the humans, etc. Yes. If there's water in the polar regions of the moon, it becomes much easier to set up a lunar base there. You can think of scientists setting up a cabin in the woods almost. It probably wouldn't be continually occupied,

but astronauts would come there periodically. They could have the air and the water from the resources on the moon, and they spend a couple of weeks digging up rocks, doing some other studies, and then going back home. It not only makes it easier, but there's also new things that you can try to do on the moon that you couldn't do otherwise. easier, but there's also new things that you can try to do on the moon that you couldn't do otherwise. And then there were two missions in 2008 and 2009 that confirmed that there was indeed water ice and not just hydrogen on the moon. So I think I now understand what's going on here. This discovery of water opens up a whole new world of possibilities on the moon, possibility of a colony, fuel for

space exploration, water for the astronauts doing that exploring to drink and live on the moon. And this is what sparks this new race to the moon you described at the beginning of our conversation. Yes, there's now definitely water ice on the moon, and this creates new interest to go back to the moon. on the moon, and this creates new interest to go back to the moon. But this time, the cast of characters is different. It's not just the United States and NASA anymore. Everyone wants to go to the moon. And a new space race to the moon also has implications for the geopolitics back on Earth.

We'll be right back. So Ken, tell us more about this new race to the moon and about the countries that are involved in it and dominating it. Well, NASA is still a big player in this. The interests in the South Pole and the water led President George W. Bush to start a moon program. But the U.S. has sort of been waffling. President Obama canceled that moon program, and then President Trump started a new one called Artemis, and President Biden has continued that. But all that waffling means NASA hasn't gotten back to the moon yet. Meanwhile, Russia's space program has largely faded away. And this has

opened the door to new players in this new moon race that includes private companies and countries that in the past you wouldn't have thought of as powers in space. Well, tell me about those new powers. First and foremost, there's China. Well, China launched its first lunar rover this morning. The unmanned spacecraft is on its way to the moon. So China has had this very steady program of exploration of the moon. China became the first country to land a space probe on the moon in 37 years. And everyone wants to get to the South Pole with the water,

but first everyone has to prove you can land on the moon at all. China's lunar rover has successfully landed on the far side of the moon. And China has managed to do this three times in a row. China has landed a robot spacecraft on the moon. It's the third time China's landed a probe on the moon, and it's now going to spend several days trying to scoop up around two kilograms of samples before heading back. And they're the only ones with a perfect record.

They haven't landed at the South Pole yet, but that's in their future plans. I'm curious what makes the Chinese so successful at this. It's one of the advantages of not being a democracy. They don't change the destination or the budget because there's been an election. So China sets out this five-year space program and they fund it steadily. So they've done what they plan and they've done it roughly when they said they were going to do it. But as you said, they didn't make it to the South Pole where the water is. What about the other players now in this race? So there was an Israeli non-profit that tried to launch the moon in 2019. We seem to have a problem with our main engine. They unfortunately crashed.

We seem to have a problem with our main engine. They unfortunately crashed. Earlier this year, there was a Japanese company called iSpace that attempted to land on the moon. Now we lost the communication. We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface. They crashed. Russia. They crashed. Russia.

They were trying to revive their space program with their first lunar mission since 1976. Now, Russia's first lunar mission in nearly 50 years has ended in failure after its spacecraft crashed into the moon. They crashed. Wow. And then there's India. We're just awaiting for the updates from the mission control room. They tried first in 2019. India's attempt to make one giant leap ended at the final step of its unmanned mission to the moon. They crashed. And so this week was essentially a redo of what they attempted to do in 2019.

And this time they were successful in landing near the South Pole. Ken, why is it so hard for all these countries and companies to get to the South Pole of the moon? I mean, when I think back to the 50-year journey we've been on since NASA landed on the moon, it would seem like it shouldn't be that hard to get to any part of the moon. The magic word that people use these days is sustainable. So everyone wants to get to the moon, but they want to do it on a budget. And that's been sort of the tricky balance. So in the 60s, NASA spent billions of dollars for the moon landings. And if you spent that much money again, you would have a very, very good chance of succeeding on landing on the moon.

But all these new companies and these emerging space nations, they're trying to do it on a much cheaper price tag. And that's sort of been a compromise of how much technology you use, how much testing you have. And they haven't been able to get that right on the first try. Right, because it turns out it's pretty hard to land on the moon on a shoestring, which is pretty intuitive, but it sounds like it's been a very painful lesson for all of these entities. Yes, it's also been painful watching them. So this clearly remains a very expensive and meaningful undertaking for anybody who wants to get new entrants, China and India, to devote the resources required to do this.

And I understand that the promise of water on the moon's surface is very tantalizing. And I get that getting there first and discovering the water and harnessing it would be a real coup. But is something else driving all of this? Yes. It's a huge moment of national pride when they succeed. And so for these countries, of course, they're not overtaking what NASA accomplished 50 years ago, but they're forging their own path that for them was not possible even 10 years ago.

When India launched this latest mission to the moon, the schoolchildren watched the launch in school because it was like a national holiday almost. And China similarly is using its space program to basically trump it that it's now one of the major powers. It uses it to try to attract cooperation with countries in Africa. It's saying, come fly with us. We'll fly you to our space station. Right. What you're saying is, it's not just a question of pride, which sounds important, and it sounds quite lovely. This is about a country's ability to project its strength on the world stage and all the things that the projection of that strength might yield, which is immeasurable. Indeed, that's what the space race of the 60s was

and that's what the space race of the 2020s is going to be. was, and that's what the space race of the 2020s is going to be. And Ken, maybe this is a silly question, but why the moon? I mean, it is hugely expensive. The failure rate is very high. There are so many ways for a country to establish its place on the global stage and its prowess relative to its rivals, ways that are cheaper and with a higher rate of success. Yes, but part of what attracts people to the moon is that it isn't easy. We choose to go to the moon. That goes back to the famous JFK speech. We choose to go to the moon in That goes back to the famous JFK speech. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.

Not because they are easy, but because they are hard. That we do these things because they are difficult. And the moon has always been this object of imagination for people. You see it every night. And it's something that's big enough that you feel like you can almost touch it, but it's so far away that actually getting there always seemed impossible.

And so being able to say you're there is almost like saying I can do the impossible. Well, Ken, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday, Russia officially confirmed the death of Yevgeny Progozhin, the head of a Russian mercenary group who led a brief rebellion against the country's military.

It was widely presumed that Progozhin was killed in a plane crash last week, but over the weekend, genetic testing gave Russian officials final verification. While the cause of the crash remains unknown, Western officials suspect that it was likely the result of sabotage by the Kremlin. And over the weekend, a white gunman carried out what police said was a racist shooting at a store in Jacksonville, Florida, killing three black people, including two customers and an employee. Plainly put, this shooting was racially motivated and he hated black people. The gunman, who described his racist motive in a set of manifestos,

Gunman, who described his racist motive in a set of manifestos, used an AR-15-style rifle, upon which he had drawn multiple swastikas. And according to police, during the shooting, he ordered several white customers out of the store. This is a dark day in Jacksonville's history. Any loss of life is tragic. But the hate that motivated the shooter's killing spree adds an additional layer of heartbreak. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennesketter, Sydney Harper, Aastha Chaturvedi, and Rob Zipko. It was edited by Michael Benoit, with help from Patricia Willans,

contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, and Chris Wood, and was also engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Van Landverk of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.