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https://spacenews.com/lunar-lander-failures-offer-a-warning-to-commercial-missions/
The apparent failure of an Indian spacecraft to land on the moon this month is providing a reminder to NASA and its commercial partners of the challenges of not only the missions themselves but sharing data on problems they experience.
If Vikram crashed during landing, as many fear, it will be the second spacecraft this year to fail to land on the moon intact. Beresheet, a lander built by Israel Aerospace Industries for SpaceIL, suffered a malfunction during a landing attempt in April, causing the spacecraft to crash to the surface. Unlike Vikram, the mission team declared the landing unsuccessful shortly after losing contact.
Those failures are taking place as NASA is working with nine companies in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program on robotic lunar landers that can carry NASA research payloads to the surface of the moon. Two of those companies, Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, have awards from NASA to carry payloads on missions scheduled for launch in 2021.
None of the nine companies have yet to fly their landers, and the recent failures provide a reminder of how difficult it is to soft-land on the moon.
"From a management perspective, we just know this is hard and it's clear that our contractor pool has a steep challenge on their hands," said Camille Alleyne, deputy manager of the CLPS program at NASA's Johnson Space Center, during a Sept. 12 panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society's Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 20 2019, @12:00AM (2 children)
Clearly, they're not using enough unicorn poo in the fuel mix.
Since when has lunar landings been something you get right on the first try?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 20 2019, @12:33AM (1 child)
You have powerful computers and software that can simulate the entirety of the mission.
You have a number of examples of past failures and successes. You can see where others messed up and learn from their mistakes.
Private companies are now trying to land on the moon. A private company may have monetary incentives to get it right that governments didn't have.
This isn't the 1950s. Every part of launching and landing a spacecraft on the moon is something that has been done before. The achievement is less spectacular when you just have to copy someone else's work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 21 2019, @02:37AM
One thing that hasn't changed from the 1950s is that you still need to do something in order discover how to do it right.