Here’s what has to happen if NASA wants to land on the Moon every month

如果 NASA 想要每月登月，必须实现这些目标

NASA’s goal of reaching the Moon’s surface as many as 21 times over the next two and a half years will require an overhaul of the agency’s approach to buying lunar landers and success in rectifying the myriad problems that have, so far, caused three of the last four US landing attempts to falter. NASA 的目标是在未来两年半内实现多达 21 次月球表面着陆，这将要求该机构彻底改革其采购月球着陆器的方式，并成功纠正迄今为止导致美国最近四次着陆尝试中有三次失败的诸多问题。

It will also require improved oversight of NASA’s industrial base and better management of a supply chain that has often failed to deliver on time. These landers are separate from NASA’s Human Landing System program, which has contracts with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop and deliver human-rated landers to ferry crews to and from the lunar surface for the agency’s Artemis program. 这也需要加强对 NASA 工业基础的监管，并更好地管理经常无法按时交付的供应链。这些着陆器与 NASA 的“载人着陆系统”（Human Landing System）项目是分开的，后者已与 SpaceX 和蓝色起源（Blue Origin）签订合同，旨在开发并交付载人着陆器，为该机构的“阿尔忒弥斯”（Artemis）计划运送宇航员往返月球表面。

Alongside the crew landers, dozens of robotic and cargo landings will deliver payloads to scout for a future Moon base and demonstrate technologies for larger vehicles, mining and resource utilization, and sustained operations during the two-week-long lunar night. 除了载人着陆器外，数十次机器人和货运着陆任务将运送有效载荷，为未来的月球基地进行勘探，并演示用于大型车辆、采矿和资源利用以及在长达两周的月球夜晚期间持续运行的相关技术。

“Frequent high-mass, low-cost access to the lunar surface” should be the highest priority for the early phase of the Moon base initiative, said Jacki Cortese, vice president of civil space at Blue Origin. This tracks with the roadmap NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman outlined in March, when he announced that the agency will refocus its efforts on building an outpost on the lunar surface, rather than a mini-space station thousands of miles above the Moon. 蓝色起源民用航天副总裁 Jacki Cortese 表示：“频繁、大质量、低成本地进入月球表面”应是月球基地计划初期的最高优先级。这与 NASA 局长 Jared Isaacman 在三月份概述的路线图一致，当时他宣布该机构将把工作重心重新聚焦于在月球表面建立前哨站，而不是在月球上方数千英里处建立小型空间站。

The fundamentals for high-frequency missions to the lunar surface are in place. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, announced eight years ago this week, has assembled a roster of commercial providers to design and build robotic Moon landers. Through CLPS, NASA has contracted with US companies for 13 missions since 2019. Four of them have launched, and just one has completed a fully successful landing. 实现高频次月球表面任务的基础已经具备。NASA 在八年前的本周宣布了“商业月球有效载荷服务”（CLPS）计划，该计划汇集了一批商业供应商来设计和制造机器人月球着陆器。通过 CLPS，自 2019 年以来，NASA 已与美国公司签订了 13 次任务合同。其中四次已经发射，仅有一次完成了完全成功的着陆。

Four more commercial landers are under construction now for launches in the second half of this year, but as is common in the space industry, their schedules have a history of delays, and some are likely to move into 2027. Eight years in, CLPS is still in its “infancy,” said Brad Bailey, NASA’s assistant deputy associate administrator for exploration, during a recent lunar science workshop. Now, NASA is asking its lander providers, still learning to crawl, to rapidly learn to walk and run over the next two years. 目前还有四个商业着陆器正在建造中，计划于今年下半年发射，但正如航天工业中常见的那样，它们的进度历来有延误，有些任务很可能会推迟到 2027 年。在最近的一次月球科学研讨会上，NASA 负责探索的助理副局长 Brad Bailey 表示，CLPS 开展八年后仍处于“婴儿期”。现在，NASA 要求其着陆器供应商——那些还在学习“爬行”的公司——在未来两年内迅速学会“行走”和“奔跑”。

Improving reliability

提高可靠性

NASA has penciled in nine lunar landings for next year, followed by 10 in 2028. NASA and its commercial partners must pick up the pace to come anywhere close to that. Isaacman acknowledged this in a hearing last week before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science. NASA 已计划明年进行九次月球着陆，随后在 2028 年进行十次。NASA 及其商业合作伙伴必须加快步伐，才能接近这一目标。Isaacman 在上周参议院拨款委员会商业、司法和科学小组委员会的听证会上承认了这一点。

“We have to do more than talk,” Isaacman said. “For a very long time across all of NASA, we’ve talked a really good game but then we kind of sit and wait for our vendors and partners to deliver outcomes, and as a result we tend to be late and it tends to cost more, so how do you change that?” “我们必须付诸行动，而不仅仅是空谈，”Isaacman 说。“在很长一段时间里，整个 NASA 都在夸夸其谈，但随后我们只是坐等供应商和合作伙伴交付成果，结果往往导致延期且成本增加，那么该如何改变这种情况呢？”

One way, Isaacman said, is for NASA to offer more aid to the companies it is paying to develop Moon landers. “You start to embed subject matter experts across the supply chain to drive outcomes,” he said. “I don’t want to sit and watch on TV as a lander tips over,” Isaacman said. “I want a high batting average here, a high probability of success. I think the way you do that is you leverage a lot of the NASA expertise, incorporate it in the supply chain, and drive the outcomes that we’re looking for.” Isaacman 表示，一种方法是 NASA 为其支付开发月球着陆器的公司提供更多援助。“你需要开始将主题专家嵌入到整个供应链中以推动成果，”他说。“我不想坐在电视机前看着着陆器翻倒，”Isaacman 说。“我希望这里有很高的成功率。我认为实现这一目标的方法是利用 NASA 的大量专业知识，将其整合到供应链中，并推动我们所期望的成果。”

The framework for the CLPS program is similar to that of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Commercial Resupply Services programs, which partnered with industry to develop new crew and cargo vehicles to service the International Space Station after the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet. But there’s a key difference. With the crew and cargo programs, NASA provided government funding and personnel to directly support development and testing before purchasing operational crew and cargo transportation missions through a separate contract. With CLPS, the agency largely skipped over this phase and went straight to buying lunar landing services. CLPS 计划的框架与 NASA 的“商业载人”和“商业补给服务”计划类似，后者在航天飞机退役后与工业界合作开发了新的载人及货运飞行器，以服务国际空间站。但有一个关键区别：在载人及货运项目中，NASA 在通过单独合同购买运营性运输任务之前，提供了政府资金和人员来直接支持开发和测试。而在 CLPS 中，该机构在很大程度上跳过了这一阶段，直接转向购买月球着陆服务。

The results of NASA’s hands-off approach on CLPS are mixed, at best. In contrast, SpaceX and Northrop Grumman flew eight consecutive successful cargo missions to the ISS before each suffered a single failure in 2014 and 2015. All of SpaceX’s crew missions have been successful to date, while Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule hasn’t worked out as NASA hoped. The early CLPS missions also have an unenviable record, with one fully successful landing, two landers that toppled over, and one spacecraft that failed to reach the Moon entirely. NASA 在 CLPS 项目上采取的“放手”策略，其结果充其量只能说是喜忧参半。相比之下，SpaceX 和诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司在 2014 年和 2015 年各自遭遇一次失败之前，曾连续八次成功执行了前往国际空间站的货运任务。迄今为止，SpaceX 的所有载人任务均已成功，而波音公司的“星际客机”（Starliner）载人舱的表现并未达到 NASA 的预期。早期的 CLPS 任务记录也不尽如人意：仅有一次完全成功的着陆，两个着陆器翻倒，还有一个航天器完全未能抵达月球。

NASA officials knew the first few CLPS missions would be risky, with companies trying something no private enterprise had done before, and something NASA itself had not accomplished since 1972. Aware of the hazards, NASA leaders at the start of the CLPS program likened the approach to a soccer or hockey team taking “shots on goal.” Their thinking was that numerous landing attempts would allow companies to wring out their technology and improve their chances of sticking the next landing. NASA 官员们知道最初的几次 CLPS 任务会有风险，因为这些公司正在尝试私营企业从未做过的事情，也是 NASA 自 1972 年以来未曾实现的事情。意识到这些危险，NASA 的领导层在 CLPS 计划启动时将这种方法比作足球或曲棍球队的“射门”。他们的想法是，多次着陆尝试将使公司能够磨合其技术，并提高下一次成功着陆的几率。

The program’s progress has been slow. Today, NASA is in a race. The agency is charged with landing astronauts on the Moon before China, perhaps as soon as 2028, and following that achievement with the build-out of a permanent base near the south pole. 该计划的进展一直很缓慢。如今，NASA 正处于一场竞赛中。该机构肩负着在竞争对手之前（可能最早在 2028 年）将宇航员送上月球的使命，并在实现这一成就后，在月球南极附近建立一个永久性基地。