Future projects of lunar exploration implemented by Yuzhnoye SDO

<p>Over the past years, the leading space powers have been returning to the idea of expeditions to the Moon and actively designing and manufacturing components for inhabited lunar bases. Yuzhnoye State Design Office has its own concept of a lunar base and, of course, cannot stand aside from the solution of scientific and technical problems related to the Moon exploration. Specialists of Yuzhnoye SDO completed conceptual development of a significant range of technologies required for the Moon exploration: a space transportation system for lunar expeditions; landers to deliver payloads to the surface of the Moon and transport experimental equipment; mobile laboratories; a reconnaissance rover to provide reconnaissance missions on the surface of the Moon; vehicles to provide lifting and transport, assembly and construction, production and technological and soil extraction work on the surface of the Moon; habitat units and other elements of the lunar infrastructure. Taking into account the high costs of lunar exploration, it is clear that international cooperation is the most realistic scenario for Yuzhnoye SDO to participate in the exploration. The U.S. lunar program is the most attractive. Private companies that NASA selects for the lunar programs can become partners of Yuzhnoye. With a view to ensuring the participation of Yuzhnoye SDO in international programs, the current state of global technologies for the Moon exploration was analyzed and opportunities to promote technologies developed by Ukrainian specialists on the international market of space technologies were identified based on the analysis. Taking into account the high level of technologies developed by the potential partners, it is proposed for the first time to consider it advisable to promote Yuzhnoye's technologies with TRL 6–9 which have already been successfully tested and the innovative technologies developed by the company which have no analogues in the world or surpass the world level in terms of their technological and economic performance. Based on the analysis of the Lunar Industrial & Research Base conceptual design, such technologies may include rocket propulsion, units and assemblies of liquid-propellant propulsion (TRL 6–9), as well as future designs such as a hydrogen energy accumulator and inert anodes made of ultra-high-temperature ceramics for electrolysis of regolith melts.</p>