The Journal. - The New Race to the Moon

Episode Date: August 25, 2023

Two countries— Russia and India— raced to the moon this week. But only one landed there successfully. WSJ’s Micah Maidenberg lays out the latest in the global space race, and explains the significance of this week’s moon landing.  Further Reading and Watching: -The New Race to Reach the Moon—and Find Water  -‘India Is on the Moon’: Chandrayaan-3 Spacecraft Lands on Lunar South Pole  -Watch: India Becomes First Country to Land on Moon’s South Pole  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This summer, two countries have had their eyes on the skies. Literally. In mid-July, India launched an uncrewed spacecraft to the moon. We have a majestic liftoff of LBM-3 M4 rocket carrying India's prestigious Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft. And in early August, in a different corner of the world, Russia did the same thing. Both missions were set to touch down on a part of the moon that no one had ever been able to reach before. And the world waited to see who would get there first. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, August 25th. Coming up on the show, the new race to the moon. delivered, but you can get chicken parmesan delivered. Sunshine? No. Some wine? Yes. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. See app for details. Have you ever wanted to go to space? I have not ever. No? You cover NASA and you've never wanted to? I mean, let me try that again. Our colleague Micah Maidenberg reports on the business of space. As somebody who's like covering this day in and day out, I tend to sort of let the protagonist behind these devices and these programs chase after those dreams. But it's certainly more possible today to imagine, you know, visiting space potentially going beyond than it did, you know, in decades past. During the Cold War, the moon captured the imaginations of both the former Soviet Union and the United States.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. At first, the Soviet Union seemed to be pulling ahead. In 1959, the Luna 2 became the first human-made object to touch moon dust. Soviet Russia scores a dramatic victory in the exploration of space with the launching of the first rocket to hit the moon. Ten years later, the U.S. took the lead when it successfully landed astronauts on the moon in its Apollo 11 mission. Twelve, eleven, ten, 9, ignition sequence start. In the decades that followed those first moon landings, the focus shifted. Scientists set their sights on other planets, sending probes to Venus and Mars, and even beyond the solar system.

But in the last 10 years, the moon has started to return to center stage. And now, the race to the moon is back on. But this is not your grandma's space race. First off, there are way more players in the game today. This time around, you have the traditional sort of space powers, you know, Russia, the United States. China is now very much in the mix and has landed devices on the moon. And Japan is working on a probe. Mexico and the United Arab Emirates are also working on their own lunar missions.

And private companies like SpaceX and Intuitive Machines are working with NASA on their space initiatives. And these modern moon missions aren't just about national prestige. At the kind of like grandest level, there's a lot of hope or a lot of thinking about how to create kind of like a sustainable, long-term presence on the moon

and sort of launch, you know, practice for like deeper space missions, perhaps to Mars. Building a lunar base that can serve as a jumping-off point starts with one region, the Moon's south pole, which happens to have an important resource. And now it appears there is much more water on the surface of the Moon

than anyone ever knew. Including NASA scientists. They expect it to find just teaspoons of water. Instead... We found maybe about a dozen of these two-gallon buckets worth of water. And potentially having those resources is really valuable because if you're doing longer term exploration and have like a multi-year presence on the moon, you can use the water for fuel, for potentially other uses. That's all stuff that you don't have to transport out to the moon from Earth.

And that makes a big difference in terms of designing and operating spacecraft. There's something romantic about it, isn't there? I read a lot of sci-fi and I watched The Expanse. And there's just something that feels like the first step to something bigger. Yeah, it could be. I mean, the romance always has to be kind of balanced out with a few different other factors. Like Chief Among Them is just like how hard it is

to pull this stuff off. It's very difficult to like escape the gravity well of Earth, you know, on a rocket launch. It takes really precise planning and sophisticated technology to send a device to catch up with the moon and start orbiting it. And then it's a tough operation to get a lander to sort of softly touch down. It's not like landing a commercial airplane. So taking off from Earth and landing on the moon are not easy.

What about getting to the moon's south pole? What are the challenges there? It's tricky. It has big craters. There are boulders. It's not as easy to sort of land on compared to the areas where the Apollo missions, you know, were conducted in the late 60s and early 1970s. The South Pole, you know, it's darker and it's colder than other parts of the moon.

You know, the sun can kind of cast shadows that make it harder to sort of understand the surface and what you're actually trying to land on. to sort of understand the surface and what you're actually trying to land on. So that adds another complicating factor for, you know, pulling off landings. If actually landing on the moon is so hard, why are all these countries making it such a priority? I think the answer to that is it is for governments

sort of in a sense like a bet on the unknown the value of basic scientific research creating aerospace and space jobs like in your country you know maybe there's technology that spins out of some of those projects that create other jobs you're hoping that you're going to motivate your economy and society in these big and ambitious ways. And this week, one country's big ambitions paid off. Yes, you can see it on your screen. That's next. bacon and egg or breakfast sandwich for only $5 at A&W's in Ontario. At Air Miles, we help you collect more moments. So instead of scrolling through photos of friends on social media, you can spend more time dinnering with them. How's that spicy enchilada?

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Bear! Run! Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. Well, Russia's Luna 25 lander is scheduled to land at the Moon's South Pole sometime on Monday night. Russia's mission to the Moon was meant to touch down first. But the day before the landing, the mission failed. Russia's space agency reported that Luna 25 had been preparing to land when it spun out of control and crashed onto the moon's surface.

For Russia, this mission was about demonstrating its technological prowess, that it could still pull off really big, tough technical feats in spite of the international isolation that it faces following its invasion of Ukraine last year. Russia has sent landers to the moon before. This was going to be their first time they'd done it in decades. And they missed the mark. The Luna 25 was launched only 10 days ago, a mission critical to Russia and to its president, Vladimir Putin. Luna 25's launch into space had raised hope in Moscow that Russia was returning to the big power moon race. It doesn't look great. It's not the outcome that Russia, that Roscosmos, the space agency, wanted to see happen.

There's concern that some of the past experience and capabilities that Russia developed during the Soviet Union days have been lost. But then on Wednesday, just days after Russia's failed mission, scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization, or ISRO, watched as their spacecraft prepared to touch down on the moon. Sir, we have achieved soft landing on the moon. India is on the moon. Around 6 p.m. local time, India stuck the landing. It was the first time that any country had landed on the south pole of the moon. What was your first thought when you saw that India had had landed on the south pole of the moon. What was your first thought when you saw that India had successfully landed on the moon? Well, my first thought was, I'll

paraphrase it, it was something like, holy cow, they did it. They did it. Where does this put India as a player in the world space business? It definitely sort of places India in the kind of pantheon of, you know, major space-faring nations, no question about it. Look, like, only three other countries have ever landed on the moon, the U.S., China, and Russia. Now India's the fourth. Micah says that India's success is especially exciting,

considering how new it is to the space race compared to those other countries. India has been like more of an up and coming space ferry nation in recent years. I mean, they still have a relatively very small budget compared to NASA, but they've really shown that they can pull off, you know, kind of big things in space. This year, India budgeted $1.5 billion for its space program. NASA's budget is $25 billion. But India has been determined to land on the moon's south pole. It actually tried to send a rover once before. That mission did not work out.

It was not able to, you know, land on the moon as India hoped. That happened in, you know, the fall of 2019, so about four years ago. The main thing that India did here, just sort of broadly speaking, is they adjusted, they learned. This success means that India is in a position to get more funding and international partnerships for its space program. And all that could lead to good things for its economy. I mean, India is building a domestic space industry, you know, no question about it. The lander that made it to the moon, that's an Indian rocket. I know, you know, ISRO is planning more missions and has like specifically talked about this operation as a demonstration of capabilities that they'll use for even more ambitious kind of projects in the future. Does this success give India any type of geopolitical advantages?

a little coincidental, but it's really interesting that India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, you know, watched the landing from South Africa where he was attending a conference of, you know, developing world country. It's called the BRICS Summit. And part of what this mission shows is that developing countries can use their own technology, like, and create their own, like, ambitions with that technology and pull it off. That's something that India will be able to talk about with countries that are still developing, that want to sort of move up. I suspect that's something that's very much on the agenda for India kind of going forward. For those watching the expeditions to the moon, this has been a big week, but the new space race is just getting started.

There's still like more to come. Landing was like the first big hurdle. You know, a big part of this mission is also sort of deploying a rover that would be able to move around the area, you know, where the lander touched down and take different kinds of like readings, you know, for research purposes. And then beyond that, like the Japanese space agency is expected to launch a probe as soon as this month. There are two U.S. moon landing missions that could launch later on this year. And next year, NASA plans to launch four astronauts

on a journey around the moon, which Micah says is key to getting humans back on the lunar surface and maybe eventually to explore beyond it. That's all for today, Friday, August 25th. Additional reporting in this episode by Vibhuti Agarwal and Aylan Woodward. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. The show is made by Annie Baxter, Catherine Brewer, Maria Byrne, Victoria Dominguez, Pia Gadkari,

Rachel Humphries, Ryan Knudsen, Matt Kwong, Kate Leinbach, Annie Minoff, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez-Espinoza, Heather Rogers, Jonathan Sanders, Pierce Singey, Jeevika Verma, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, and me, Jessica Mendoza. Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard. Thanks for listening.

See you on Monday.