A certain attractiveness
Shackleton Crater is approximately 13 miles (21 kilometers) wide, with an area roughly equal to the cities of Philadelphia, Las Vegas, or Detroit. The crater measures 4.2 kilometers (14,000 ft) deep. Yeah Endurance and Chang’e 7 land on or near the crater rim, as expected, it would be the first time landers from different nations operated simultaneously so close to each other on another planetary body.
Plans to send two missions to Shackleton around the same time are also emblematic of the competition brewing between the United States and China to land humans on the Moon before the end of this decade. Both nations plan to build a lunar base near the Moon’s south pole in the 2030s.
The highest ridges of Shackleton’s rim offer the advantage of nearly continuous sunlight, providing a lander or future lunar base with a stable source of solar energy just off the floor of a perpetually shadowed crater, where temperatures are cold enough to preserve ancient ice deposits. The Moon’s polar cold traps, including Shackleton, are attractive targets for future exploration. The ice in these locations could be harvested to supply drinking water, oxygen, and rocket fuel for a lunar outpost.
Shackleton has some relevance for fans of Apple TV’s alternate history sci-fi series For all humanityin which prospectors from the United States and the Soviet Union compete for water resources within the crater.
Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander undergoes testing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Credit: Origen Azul
Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander undergoes testing at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Credit: Origen Azul
blue origin Endurance The lander is the first test flight of the company’s Blue Moon Mark 1 design, an 8-meter (26-foot) tall vehicle intended to transport cargo and experiments to the lunar surface. Blue Moon Mark 1 is a stepping stone towards Blue Origin’s human-rated lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis program.
