The Daily: A New Race to the Moon

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From New York Times, I'm Michael Balbaro. This is a 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

Can 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 they 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

Can 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 and

Last week it took the momentous last step and tempting to land it on the moon near the South Pole

After arriving in lunar orbit is sort of been a 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

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. Hmm a very good evening to all of you

We at ISRO welcome you to the live coverage of India's prestigious

Chandra and three 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 his track 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 saying each step along the way

Currently only two engines are now being fired that the engine 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 surface. It continues to descend

We can see the Honorable Prime Minister Srinarendra 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 which will it slows down

Didn't it stops for a moment at a this 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

I

Also, there's cheering breaking out in the mission controlled

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 in one part

Really

India's successful moon mission

Is not just India's alarm

India was the first country to successfully land near the South Pole to moon

this success

belongs to all of humanity

And

Can 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 is doesn't compare to what NASA did

During the space program when I was young

But it's a complete different space race now

Everyone including India wanted 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 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

When 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 you know 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 produce all these amazing new images of these new planets and

For decades people kind of just overlooked the moon

This is something that you looked up at night and perhaps notices some craters, but it had been forgotten scientifically

Mm-hmm, but this started to change in the mid-1990s

There were radar images taken and by the Erasebo radio telescope in Puerto Rico

They bounced radar signals off the moon and there are certain places particularly in the polar regions where

the reflection seemed particularly bright as if there was something shiny

Almost like ice at the bottom of its 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. He had this proposal for

Sending a dirt cheap spacecraft to the moon. It was the orbiter 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 was still 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

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 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 the solar system

Where the layers are frost slowly layered on top of each other over four and a half billion years

Got it. So suddenly all these pieces that 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 to who 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 hmm and

You can do other things with work

You can split it apart into hydrogen 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 hmm. 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 taking up rocks doing some other studies and then going back home

It's 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

hmm, 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

Possibly have 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

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 can 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 interest in the South Pole and the water led President George W. Bush to start a moon program

But the US 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

Now 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 there's only ones with a perfect record

They haven't landed on 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 why the advantage 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 done it roughly when they said they're gonna 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 nonprofit that tried to launch the moon in 2019

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

We lost the communication we have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface

They crashed hmm 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

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 to the moon

especially a country that has lots of competing interests to balance and that makes me wonder what's really

motivating all these

companies and especially these new entrants China and India to devote the resources required

To do this and I understand that the promise of water on the moon service is very tantalizing

And I get that getting there first and discovering the water and harnessing it would be a real coup

But it's 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 school children 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

And can 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 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

Is big enough that you feel I can almost touch it, but it's so far away that actually getting there always seemed impossible

And so do you have 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 do it back

Here's what else you need to know today on Sunday Russia officially confirmed the death of Yevgeny

Progosian the head of a Russian mercenary group who led a brief rebellion against the country's military

It was widely presumed that Progosian 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 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 and he lost a 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 Tennis Ketter, Sidney Harper,

Asda Chatharvedi, and Rob Zipko

It was edited by Michael Benoit with help from Patricia Willens

Contains original music by Marion 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 Balbaro. See you tomorrow.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.