by 2023 was an important year for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the moon’s south pole, and 2024 is shaping up to be another exciting year for exploration space. .
Several new missions under NASA’s Artemis plan and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will target the Moon.
The second half of the year will see some exciting launches, with the launch of the Martian Moons Exploration mission in September, Europa Clipper and Hera in October and Artemis II and VIPER to the Moon in November – if all goes to plan .
I’m a planetary scientist, and here are six of the space missions I’m most excited to follow in 2024.
1. Europa Clipper
NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a surface made of ice. Beneath its icy shell, Europa is likely to have a saltwater ocean, which scientists expect to contain more than twice as much water as all the oceans here on Earth combined.
Together with Europa Clipper, scientists are trying to investigate whether Europa’s ocean could be a suitable habitat for extraterrestrial life.
The mission plans to do this by flying over Europa nearly 50 times to study the moon’s icy shell, surface geology and subsurface ocean. The mission will also look for active geysers peeking out from Europa.
This mission will change the game for scientists hoping to understand life in oceans like Europa.
The launch window – the period during which the mission could launch and reach its intended route – opens on October 10, 2024, and lasts 21 days. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030.
2. The launch of Artemis II
The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to return to the Moon. It will send people to the Moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. Artemis also includes plans for a long-term, sustained presence in space that will prepare NASA to send humans even further – to Mars.
Artemis II is the first crewed stage in this plan, and it is planned that four astronauts will be on board during the 10-day mission.
The mission builds on Artemis I, which launched an uncrewed capsule into lunar orbit in late 2022.
Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon before returning them home. It is currently planned to launch as early as November 2024. But there is a chance that it will be pushed back to 2025, depending on whether all the necessary equipment, such as spacesuits and oxygen equipment, is in place. ready
3. VIPER to search for water on the Moon
VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a golf cart-sized robot that NASA will use to explore the moon’s south pole in late 2024.
Originally scheduled to launch in 2023, NASA pushed back the mission to conduct more tests on the lander system, which was developed by Astrobotic, a private company, as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that evaporate easily, such as water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These materials could provide resources for future human exploration of the Moon.
The VIPER robot will rely on batteries, heat pipes and radiators for its 100-day mission, navigating everything from the extreme heat of moonlight – when the temperature can reach 224 degrees Fahrenheit (107 degrees Celsius) reach – to the frigid shadowy regions of the moon. can reach a mind-boggling -400 F (-240 C).
Launch and delivery of VIPER to the lunar surface is scheduled for November 2024.
4. Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1 missions
NASA recently invested in a class of low-cost small planetary missions called SIMPLEx, which stands for Small Innovative Missions for Planned Exploration. These missions save costs by tagging other addresses as something called rideshare, or secondary payload.
One example is the Lunar Trailblazer. Like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the Moon.
But while VIPER will land on the Moon’s surface, studying in detail a specific area near the south pole, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the Moon, measuring surface temperatures and mapping the locations of water molecules around the globe .
Currently, Lunar Trailblazer is on track to be ready by early 2024.
However, as it is a secondary payload, the launch timing of Lunar Trailblazer depends on the launch readiness of the primary payload. The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for a mid-2024 launch, is the Lunar Trailblazer’s journey.
PRIME-1 will drill into the Moon – a test run for the type of drill VIPER will use. But its launch date is likely to depend on whether launches go earlier in time.
An earlier Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the same landing partner was pushed back to February 2024 at the earliest, and further delays could push back PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer.
5. JAXA’s Martian Moon exploration mission
While many visitors to Earth’s moons – large and small, robotic and crewed – are planned for 2024, the Mars moons Phobos and Deimos will also be receiving visitors soon. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is developing a robotic mission called the Martian Moon eExploration, or MMX, which is planned for launch around September 2024.
The main scientific objective of the mission is to determine the origin of the moons of Mars. Scientists aren’t sure if Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that were pulled into orbit by Mars’ gravity or if they came from debris that was already in orbit around Mars.
The spacecraft will spend three years orbiting Mars performing science operations to observe Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also land on the surface of Phobos and collect a sample before returning to Earth.
6. ESA’s Hera mission
Hera is a European Space Agency mission to return to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system visited by NASA’s DART mission in 2022.
But DART didn’t just visit these asteroids, it collided with one of them to test a planetary defense technique called “kinetic impact.” DART hit Dimorphos with such force that it changed their orbit.
The kinetic impact technique smashes something into an object to change its trajectory. This could be useful if humanity finds a potentially hazardous object on a collision course with Earth and needs to divert it.
Hera will launch in October 2024, making its way in late 2026 to Didymos and Dimorphos, where it will study the physical properties of the asteroids.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.
It was written by: Ali M. Bramson, Purdue University.
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Ali M. Bramson receives funding from NASA.
