Last month,China delayedthe launch of an ambitious robotic mission to the south pole of the Moon, Chang’e 7, until early next year. The country did not provide a detailed explanation for the schedule slip, but it was welcomed by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman.
“They are targeting the exact same location on lunar south pole,” Isaacman said Wednesday evening at the Off World conference in Houston. “We may have dodged a bullet with the Chang’e 7 mission a couple of weeks ago because that would have gone to the Shackleton crater.”
Much of the lunar surface is pretty barren, but the south pole, and the Shackleton Crater in particular, offers some of the most coveted real estate there. That’s because the high rims of the crater create permanently shadowed regions known as “cold traps,” where it’s thought that water (in the form of ice, of course) and other useful materials may have accumulated over billions of years.
Limited real estate
In all of NASA’s and China’s plans for long-term settlement on the Moon, relatively few square miles at the south pole of the Moon matter the most. It’s there that both countries believe they can establish an enduring presence that will help them learn techniques for expansion further into the Solar System. Isaacman and other US officials have started to express concerns that China could establish exclusion zones where robotic probes and then human missions go. Chang’e 7 will bring considerable mobility to the Moon.
“It has rovers, it has hopper drones like we now have in development but didn’t eight months ago, and could have potentially denied access to some of the most interesting spots,” Isaacman said. “They want to interact with the water ice, and they want to get really good at the skills for where they’ll want to go next for their Neil Armstrong-like moment. Except it won’t be on the Moon, it’ll be on Mars.”
