According to CCTV News on 10 January 2024, on the 9th of local time, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) held a briefing to say that it would postpone the “Artemis 2” manned mission around the moon originally scheduled for 2024 to September 2025, and the “Artemis 3” manned mission to the moon originally scheduled for 2025 to September 2026, and the “Artemis 3” manned mission to the moon originally scheduled for 2026 to September 2026, said NASA. “The Artemis 3 manned mission to the Moon, originally scheduled for 2025, has been postponed to September 2026.
“Artemis 4 will remain on schedule until September 2028, as planned. The mission is the second manned lunar landing programme, with four cosmonauts on board the Gateway Lunar Orbital Space Station and, in due course, a lunar surface landing.
According to Xinhua News Agency, on 8 January 2024, the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket was scheduled to be launched on 8 January to send the Peregrine Falcon lunar lander developed by the United States Space Robotics Corporation into space. This is the first time in more than 50 years that the United States has embarked on a mission to the moon, and it is also the first time that a private company in the United States has challenged a mission to the moon.
A few hours after the successful launch of the “Peregrine Falcon” lunar lander on 8 January, the developer, U.S. Aerospace Robotics, discovered and disclosed the problem of “serious loss of propellant,” and multiple observations suggested that the “Peregrine Falcon” was unlikely to be able to land in space as planned. “Peregrine Falcon is unlikely to complete a soft landing on the Moon as planned.
After the news of the setback of the Peregrine Falcon mission to the moon, the New York Times commented on the 8th that the failure raised questions about NASA’s strategy of relying on private companies, mainly small start-ups, to send scientific experiments to the surface of the moon. “Getting to the moon on a low budget is proving more difficult than many thought.”
According to CCTV News, Space Exploration Technologies conducts the second unmanned flight test of its Starship heavy-lift launch vehicle on 20 April 2023, local time, in Texas, US. Three minutes after liftoff, the rocket broke up unplanned and exploded, forcing the mission to be aborted.
As previously reported by CCTV News, on 18 November 2023, NBC reported that Space Exploration Technologies conducted a second test flight of the Starship rocket system in Texas at around 8 a.m. EST.
During the live test flight, the rocket successfully lifted off and suffered a “rapid unplanned disassembly” after the separation of the two stages, when the super-heavy booster exploded. About 15 minutes after the launch, mission control lost contact with the Starship. Xinhua reported that the first two stages separated successfully after lift-off, but then the booster and the ship exploded one after another.
Starships will first be used to launch satellites and carry out manned missions to the Moon before the “Mars” programme.
Musk has said that Starship could reduce “the cost of going into space by orders of magnitude”, allow people to travel to Mars, and ultimately allow humans to become a multi-planetary species.
