Race Towards The Moon…
The Moon… Earth’s only natural satellite. It’s the brightest and largest celestial object in Earth’s night sky. Its gravitational pull is one of the main drivers of sea tides on Earth. Our Moon is the only place beyond Earth where humans have set foot, so far. Humans have been exploring space since 1957, and we have made a lot of discoveries. But still, there are lots of mysteries to be uncovered…
Since 1957 many organizations and space agencies have done research and scientific experiments about the moon. Many renowned organizations such as ISRO, NASA, and CNSA have conducted manned and unmanned missions toward the moon to study and make discoveries about the moon. NASA’s well-known Apollo missions, ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1, and many such missions have made a great contribution to space exploration. If we observe over the past decade, there’s a significant rise in the number of missions and experiments conducted to study the Moon. There is an important and good reason behind the same.
As we all know space is endless and it expands every second. Also, the stars like our Sun in the Solar System have a definite life span and will be out of energy in the near future. So, the idea behind the same is human civilization will eventually have to look for some other habitual planets similar to our Earth. Many scientists and astronomers have plans to colonize our nearest planet Mars. So, to get there Moon can act as the bridge between Mars and Earth, leading to less resource utilization to get over Mars. You can get a brief idea about NASA’s Artemis mission which is based on the same concept in the link below.
This is one of the reasons why humans are in the race towards exploration of the Moon. Recently, India and Japan have been among the top countries to land successfully on the Lunar Surface through their Chandrayaan-3 and SLIM missions. Also after Apollo, NASA’s Artemis will be an important mission to keep an eye on.
Scientists also have found the presence of water ice on polar regions of the Moon through various missions such as Chandrayaan-1. Discoveries like this will be important for future space missions and the idea of colonizing the other planets. Our natural satellite, the Moon has many mysteries to be discovered. One of them is the Dark Side Of The Moon. Humans have conducted many manned missions to the moon but we never explored the dark side of the moon till now. Only the same side of the Moon is visible from the Earth always! It is assumed that there are various mysteries hidden on the Far side of the moon.
The Far Side Of The Moon is also assumed to be the best place to set up space telescopes for getting an even better look at the universe. Also, scientists claim that the Far Side of the Moon has been out of reach from the sunlight since the creation of our natural satellite. This makes it a more curious and important site in space to research.
So, several reasons like Earth’s climate, Tides, Water ice, Scientific research, and Proximity to Earth make the Moon an important aspect of space exploration. Hence, nations across the globe are in a race to the Moon to find mysteries and explore the Moon for the future benefit of human civilization. Till now countries like the USA, the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan have successfully landed over the Lunar surface. Cheers to all those scientists and engineers for the effort behind this great success!
I hope you have got to learn something new from this short article. If you find any content wrong or misleading, feel free to approach me!
