>>
Industry>>
Space>>
Heracles Lunar mission will co...There is definitely a new space race brewing ever since Donald Trump announced his administration’s intention to put men on the moon once again. Furthermore, this race is even more intense this time due to competing private rocket companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and United Launch Alliance, among others. Riding on the new wave of interest and excitement for the moon is an ambitious mission that is scheduled to be carried in a joint operation by the European, Canadian and Japanese space agencies. The mission is named Heracles and would feature a lander as well as a rover that would explore the lunar surface and collect samples.
The rover would then proceed to deposit its collections to the lander, from which a module would take off and head towards Gateway, NASA’s space station which would be orbiting the moon. The Heracles mission is planned for launch in 2020, while NASA’s Gateway mission is still in its design stages. The soil samples collected from the lunar surface and transferred to the Gateway orbiter would later be returned to the Earth onboard NASA’s Orion crew capsules. While the Heracles mission would be conducted as a collaboration between Canadian, Japanese, European space agencies, it would be assisting NASA’s Artemis Program which aims to put men on the moon.
The Gateway lunar orbiting space station was conceived in order to provide assistance to lunar missions