2023 is a banner year for space exploration. The record for the number of people in space at one time was broken, there were new space tourism flights and the Euclid Space Telescope was launched.
2024 will be very exciting, but what awaits us?
Artemis 2 will send astronauts to the Moon
The NASAIt plans to launch Artemis 2 in November 2024 and send four astronauts on a ten-day mission around the moon.
This will be the penultimate test task Artemis 3It will send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
“Together, we are ushering in a new era for a new generation of star navigators and dreamers: the Artemis generation,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during an event near the space center on April 3, 2023. Houston, Texas.
Artemis 2 is part of the multi-stakeholder Artemis Lunar Exploration Program, led by NASA and involving six major space agencies. European Space Agency (ESA).
And robots will land on the moon
NASA will send several landers to the moon in 2024 as part of CLSP (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiatives. The spacecraft will send robotic crews to the Moon's south pole to collect critical scientific data.
These include VIPER, a soil sampling explorer, and PRIME-1 Chemical analysis of ice samplesand Blue Coast Mission 1, which will investigate the heat flow of the lunar interior.
In May, China also plans to send Chang'e 6, a robotic lunar probe, to the moon's surface.
The rover will collect the first lunar samples from the far side of the Moon. Pakistan, France, Italy and Sweden will drive the mission involving the Pakistani lunar orbiter ICECUBE-Q with their instruments.
Visit the other moons of the solar system
Japan plans to launch the Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission to Mars' largest moon, Phobos, in 2024. This mission provides for landing a robot and receiving the first samples from the moon. The sample contains only about 20 grams of “regolith,” or loose rock and dust from the lunar surface, which could be very valuable to scientists.
NASA also plans to launch the Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter in October. It hopes to make 44 close flybys of the Moon and identify potential landing sites in Europe in the future. Europa Clipper will also collect data on the moon's ice and potential oceans, the chemical composition necessary for life, and the geological characteristics of its surface.
Asteroid landing
ESA's Hera is scheduled to launch to its landing sites on two asteroids, Didymos and Dimorphos, in October 2024. Both asteroids are less than 1 km in diameter.
The Hera mission is a follow-up to NASA's DART (Dual Asteroid Redirect Test), which impacted Dimorphos and changed its orbit in 2022.
Hera will conduct a follow-up assessment of the asteroid for planetary defense purposes. It will collect data on the mass and dynamics of the demorphoses to understand how DART changed the asteroid's orbit. Its arrival in the Didymos system is scheduled for December 2026.
NASA's Lucy will also target the asteroid system, this time the eight asteroids orbiting Jupiter called the Trojan asteroids. Lucy hopes to collect data on the formation of our solar system.
Commercial spaceflights will accelerate to lower orbits
By 2024, space flights will be launched, vehicles capable of flying into low orbit and landing on Earth on conventional runways.
The Sierra Space Dream Chaser launches a reusable space plane on a rocket. It is designed to carry three to seven crew members and can be re-delivered to the International Space Station.
2024 will see the first flight of a new type of launch vehicle called the New Glenn to help launch space shuttles into orbit. The new Glenn is designed as a reusable launch vehicle that can launch commercial spaceflights into space, including space tourism flights.
(gg/ers)
