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Credit: NASA, JPL Secondary Creator Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Landing on the Moon is Hard
Landing on the Moon is Hard
By Serenity
First off space is hard, a difficult thing to handle, especially to be launched and landed onto the moon. On September 7th, 2019 the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) lost contact with the Vikram lunar lander while trying to undertake the landing on the moon’s south pole and make history. Minutes passed and they are all scrambling to recover the connection to the lander. But sadly it was an unhappy landing. People related this to another incident earlier that year. A private robotic Israeli lander, Beresheet crashed into the moon instead of landing. It's a reminder to people of how hard it is to land and launch a space expedition.
The Beresheet spacecraft captured this "selfie" during its failed landing maneuver on April 11, 2019. (Image credit: SpaceIL/IAI)
Eagle lander. Credit: NASA
One other big challenge in the final descent phase is the actual surface of the moon. Tools were used, like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), to see the moon and the spot ideal for landing. The LRO can take pictures with a very detailed view of the moon, but even with these pictures it is still very difficult to land. One of the problems during landing is that the land is uneven. When they are landing the landers it is really hard to land because of how bumpy the ground is. You never know if there is going to be a rock under all that dust.
Even Apollo 15 had trouble landing. The astronauts were told to shut down the engines as soon as they landed on the moon to avoid sucking up dust into the engines and risking a blowback explosion.
The moon is hard enough to land on, but Mars is even harder. There have been 45 spaceships sent to Mars but half of the landers failed to make the landing. Why it is so hard to land is because earth's atmosphere is really thick but Mars's atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere. That means parachutes will not help like they do on Earth to slow the lander down. Instead, combinations of parachutes and complex retrorockets are needed as well as heat shields.
How to build your own lander.
Supplies to gather around your house:
1 small paper cup or bowels
3 index cards
10 marshmallows (miniature)
2 marshmallows (regular size)
1 piece of cardboard
8 plastic straws
3 rubber bands
scissors
tape or glue
Instructions
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