 India has become the fourth country in the world to land a craft on the moon. What does this mean for space exploration? Auto workers in the United States are preparing to vote on a strike. What are the issues at stake? This is the Daily Debrief. These are our stories for the day and before you go any further, if you are watching this on YouTube, don't forget to hit that subscribe button. Our first story is from outer space, the moon to be precise. India became the fourth country in the world to land a spacecraft on the moon on Wednesday. The mission Chandraran 3 landed in the South Polar region of the moon, becoming the first rover to do so. The mission rover will spend next few days taking pictures and carrying out experiments on the moon's surface. To understand why this is significant, we go to D. Raghunandan of the Delhi Science Forum. So Raghunandan, can you first tell us why was this landing scientifically significant? What were the milestones achieved? Well, as far as India is concerned, the main objective here was to demonstrate a system for landing a vehicle on another planet, another rover. Now, this is an important target in itself. Because the more you want to do scientific activities on any extraterrestrial body outside the Earth, there are two ways to do it. Either you send a human being or you send what's essentially a robot. And obviously, you would rather send a robot if they can do the same job because sending a person is more risky and is more expensive. So to achieve that, what you first need is to be able to send an object like a lander which can descend and land softly on that planet so that its instruments can start working. And then if it can also send a rover, which can roam around the planet and do some tests. Now, this is a first crucial step in a longer process of achieving technological capability for doing extraterrestrial exploration. The next step has to be to be able to bring the lander back because right now the lander is there and it will do tests on the surface of the moon. And once it's done, these 15 days are over, that's it, the lander will just be left behind in the moon. But tomorrow you would like the lander to be able to bring back samples of moon rock, moon dust, etc., which means the lander should have the capability to first land softly on the moon and then come back up to a orbiting vehicle, which will then pilot it back to earth. But this is the crucial first step. If you don't do this, you can't even think of doing the land. So if you look at the ISRO's website, it will tell you a lot about the instruments that is sending, what they will do scientifically and so on. But the main objective is described as to demonstrate end-to-end capability of landing a lander along with a rover on the surface of the moon. That is the actual purpose, what instruments are there, what they measure, etc. Of course, if you're sending a lander, you'll send some instruments. So you figure out what instruments you'll send. But the main objective is to achieve a soft landing on another planet. Yeah. Okay. And of course, to talk more about what this mission is doing, this mission landed on the solar, on the south pole of the moon, it became the first mission to do. So what is so significant about the south one, what will the rover be studying over there? First, let me clarify. The media has been full of this, that it's the landing at the south pole of the moon. It's not. It's a landing in the south polar region of the moon. The south pole would be 90 degrees south. This landing site is about 70 degrees south in the moon. So it's not exactly the south pole because that would have been too extreme. The temperatures at the actual pole would be minus 200 Celsius, where your instruments would probably crack in the cold and they may not be able to function, etc. So we've chosen a landing site which is close to the southern polar region, about 70 degrees south. And the importance of this is that Apollo's moon landings with the Neil Armstrong and that whole series was closer to the equator because what they were looking for was essentially a nice warm spot to be able to land safely and bring the astronauts back. And on the equator in the moon, you have a fair amount of daylight, it's sunny. Now the further south you go, it does get a little colder, but then the soil is different, the terrain is different. And in this south polar region, there are also many deep craters. And in these deep craters, you have got zones which are in permanent shadow. The sunlight doesn't reach at all. And in those places, the temperatures can be really low, can go below 100 Celsius. So that is where it is expected that some water ice would have formed and maybe lying there in fairly large quantities of ice. Now if one of these explorations, either Chandayaan 3 or subsequent missions, look at water ice, that would be a very promising discovery for future moon activities, especially if you want to establish some kind of a permanent base for humans on the moon. Like you have in Antarctica here, where every country has a research station. So if you want to set up a research station on the moon, you need to have a source of water for drinking purposes and also to use the water to break it up into hydrogen and oxygen, which you can then use as fuel. So these are the twin objectives for which water becomes a crucial element. And Chandayaan 1, which India had sent up over a decade ago, has located the presence of water ice on the moon. Previous exploratory missions of different countries including NASA have also located water ice, but they are in such small quantities on the surface of the moon, you may not be able to extract that water. So you need to find larger sources of water, which potentially are available in this region of the moon. And at this point of time, how do you assess the space missions and space research being performed by other countries? Are there more lunar missions being planned? Yeah. See, the US is going back to the moon in a big way. It had stopped its lunar expeditions, especially crewed missions after Apollo 17. That was the last mission with the crew that went to the moon. And since the US was sending crews to the moon, it did not focus so much on robotic missions. Other countries like the erstwhile Soviet Union, later Russia, they focused more on robotic missions than on crewed missions because they did not want or did not succeed in sending crewed missions to the moon. So the Soviet Union had its lunar series and we have seen the unfortunate crash of Luna 25, which was the first attempt after 47 years of Russia to go back to the moon. Now, the US has decided to go back to the moon to look to establish a permanent base, either on the surface of the moon or in a space station orbiting the moon. You have a space station orbiting the earth. So they are thinking that they can replicate that around the moon and either from there or from a space station on the moon surface, from there to use that as a base for exploring the other planets in the solar system. Because it could be cheaper to launch a rocket from the moon than it is from the earth because the moon has much lower gravity, it does not have an atmosphere, so you will require less fuel, but then you must solve the problem of getting some fuel on the moon as well. But the US, along with many other countries which are signatories to what is called the Artemis mission of the US, to which now India is also a signatory, have launched this mission with other countries participating, especially the European Union, many of those countries, Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, etc. And now India has joined. So all these countries will be chipping in some contributions to setting up that station, the space station orbiting the moon or maybe a station on the surface of the moon to act as what the Artemis mission calls a gateway. And gateway with a capital G is now going to be the target where, which will act as a base for potential further space explorations using the moon as a base. So that is as far as the US and its allies are concerned. But there is also China, which is of course now the growing space power, but with this cold relations between the US and China, the prospects of collaboration between these two in space are very low. So it's very likely that China will have its own independent program on the moon with possibly Russia as an ally. So it looks as if you're going to have one program led by the US and many of its allies, one program led by China with maybe Russia joining in. And India is going to be dangling somewhere in between, but it looks as if it has already cast its lot with the US and the Artemis program. Right, thank you Raghu for these fascinating insights into the different aspects of the currently ongoing lunar explorations. Auto workers in the US are set to vote for authorizing a strike under the banner of the United Auto Workers or UAW. They have presented a series of demands which break from years of concessions by their former leadership. Among the key demands are an end to the tiered system of contracts, higher wages and lower working hours. In order to understand why this is historic, we go to Natalia Marcus. So Natalia to start off, can you tell us more about the workers in this sector? You know, how are they organized and why is this round of mobilizing especially historic? Yeah, so, you know, in the United Auto Workers, the UAW, there are around 144,000 auto workers that are working at the top three biggest auto manufacturers in the country, Ford, Stellantis and General Motors. And there's one contract for all of these 144,000 workers that expires on September 14th. So they're all mobilizing for this massive contract campaign to bolster the negotiations and bolster the workers' demands around this current contract. You know, I think this is a working class that has been severely affected by the deindustrialization that has happened in the United States, you know, since the inauguration of the neoliberal era of economics, right? You know, back in the late 20th century, a lot of the most stable jobs in the country in the working class, which were these industrial jobs, these companies picked up and took these jobs to global South countries, especially Mexico, where they could essentially pay workers less and they were paid in the United States. So this sector has been completely devastated. And this is also shown through the really, you know, a lack of militancy that you see in the union leadership around this time that has only just started to change with the current leadership of the UAW, right? So the UAW, you know, in recent history has a history of giving a lot of concessions and giving a lot of demands away to the company, essentially giving handouts to the company. Now this is starting to change and the current UAW leadership is saying that they actually want to promote the most radical demands of the pre-neoliberal era of the era when these jobs in the sector was the strongest. This includes cost of living adjustment, raises tied to inflation, even demanding a 32 hour work week. So you can see how the power that's being exerted in this sector is just now starting to change. Can you tell us more about the specific demands that they are making? Yeah. So there, like I described, raises tied to rises in inflation, a 32 hour work week, which is pretty radical in the United States, just shortening the amount of time that people are at work. The end of a tiered system in wages and worker conditions, a lot of workers are temporary workers, so making all of those temporary workers fully permanent positions. Yeah, you know, I think that like the raises are a really prime example because of the way that inflation has really just decimated the amount that these workers are paid, right? So yeah, I think those are, I would say, the central demands. Right. And what does this whole action mean for mobilizing in the US, in US labor as a whole? Yeah, you know, I think that these workers are taking a lot of inspiration from the recent UPS Teamsters victory. You know, the UPS Teamsters won huge raises for both part-time and full-time workers. They eliminated a very unpopular two-tier system of work. You know, they won Martin Luther King Day as a holiday. They won air conditioning in packaged trucks, among many other massive wins. And their strategy was really to mobilize the entire workforce of 340,000 workers. And UAW is taking a lot of inspiration from this. This is actually the first time in living memory that the workforce of UAW is actually being mobilized for a big three contract campaign. So it's huge, right? They are really taking examples from the resurgence of the labor movement, not just with the Teamsters, but with the actors and writers that are on strike. The first time there's been a joint strike of actors and writers since 1960. You know, really trying to mobilize the ring and file. And employ many of the same exact tactics that the Teamsters use. So practice pickets. They're just now starting to use practice pickets, which are, you know, when you mobilize a workforce to go out, do a mini picket line before the shift starts to show that they're ready and they're willing to do these pickets when it comes to the real strike. And then, you know, you get those workers back into their shifts. And this really sends a powerful message to the company, right? And I think that, you know, the company's CEOs and, you know, capitalist pundits are really starting to take notice. You know, the CEO of Stellantis, he didn't even show up for negotiations. He was on vacation. But he said that, you know, the stunts that the UAW president has been pulling are theatrics. He said that, you know, the demands are unrealistic of the workers. And also, you know, Jim Kramer, a notable, you know, capitalist pundit in mainstream media has said that, you know, UAW is employing class warfare that, you know, he's frightened by the current leadership. They're looking like the 1930s UAW, which, you know, sort of famously and notably was very communist and socialist influenced. So, yeah, lots of lots of exciting changes. Right. Thank you Natalia for this update. This is all we have in this episode of the Daily Dibri. For more details on these stories and for other such stories, visit our website, peoplesdispatch.org and our social media pages on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For more video updates, visit our YouTube page. Thank you for watching.