by 2024 will be a great time for space missions – especially to our nearest neighbour, the Moon. And that continues from an already epic 2023.
I’m a lab scientist, so I always like to have a “proper” sample to analyze. Rather than looking through a telescope to look at the stars, I prefer to see them in a vial in my lab. My preferred technique is to burn the material to ash while measuring the organic compounds and other species released in the process.
So it was a great joy to see NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission return safely from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023. It was a pleasure to find a few precious fragments of Bennu to study.
CLPS missions
NASA’s series of Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) missions, many of which will launch in 2024, are set to bring various instruments to the Moon. These missions are built and launched by various private companies under contract from NASA.
The CLPS program is part of NASA’s Artemis initiative to continue human exploration of the Moon. One of the main aims of the program is to investigate the possibilities of using lunar resources as fuel – therefore, some of the instruments on CLPS-1, aka Peregrine, are designed to estimate the amount of hydrogen on the surface of the moon. In fact, my colleagues at the Open University have built an instrument to do just that.
CLPS-2 is scheduled to launch in early January 2024, and four more CLPS missions are planned for launch during the year. That’s the good thing about the Moon – it’s so close that there isn’t much concern about launch windows (no complicated orbits to calculate) or distance traveled.
In fact, human exploration of the Moon is expected to take a small step forward, possibly as early as November 2024, when Artemis II orbits the Moon for several days. One of the astronauts on board will be a woman – certainly a huge leap forward in the all-male exploration of our nearest neighbour.
Trailblazer
Continuing with the lunar theme, NASA’s Trailblazer mission goes to the Moon to understand where any water is located. Is it locked inside the rock as part of the mineral structure, or is it buried as ice on the rocky surface?
Trailblazer is currently scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2024. However, no exact date has been confirmed. It’s a small mission, part of the Artemis human lunar exploration program.
Change 6
The launch of Chang’e 6, the latest Chinese mission to the Moon, is planned for May 2024 and is intended to return material to Earth. This is particularly significant as the spacecraft will collect material from the side of the moon – the Aitkin Basin of the South Hole.
This is a region where there is believed to be a lot of frozen water. We have no samples of material from this part of the Moon – and although any ice will be long gone by the time the samples are back on Earth, we will hopefully learn a lot about this unexplored region and its potential as a native country. a water source for human visitors.
Hera
In September 2022, NASA’s Dart mission encountered a system consisting of two asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed into Dimorphos (the junior partner). The impact had a purpose: to see if such a collision could divert the asteroid in its path – a necessary goal if Earth was ever the target of an incoming asteroid.
Two years later, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will be launched to visit the same asteroid pair. It is not designed to hit either body, but to measure the effect of an earlier Dart impact. At the time of the collision, Dimmorphos’ orbit around Didymos sped up by 33 minutes – a significant movement that indicated the possibility of a deflection of an asteroid’s path.
But what we don’t know (and won’t until Hera enters in 2026) is how effective the impact was. Did Dimorphos stay in its new orbit, bounce back into its old orbit, or continue to accelerate? Hera will investigate in detail – and its findings will help define Earth’s planetary defense protocol. Assuming, that is, we pay attention.
Clip Europe
Launching almost simultaneously with Hera is NASA’s flagship mission: the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa.
This mission has been long awaited, since the Galileo mission showed us views of the icy surface of Europa in the late 1990s. Since then, we have learned about the ocean that lies beneath the ice sheet. It is exciting that Europa can support life in the form of a substantial fauna similar to the animals that live on the ocean floor around the hydrothermal vents.
Europa Clipper will fly over Europa between 40 and 50 times, taking detailed images of the surface, monitoring the satellite for icy plumes – and, most importantly, seeing if the conditions on this moon are suitable to support it life. The mission will also investigate whether Europa’s oceans are salty, and whether the essential building blocks of life (carbon, nitrogen and sulfur) are present.
Sadly though, none of these observations will be transmitted back to us until 2030, so we’ll have to wait patiently until then. The investigation will be complemented by observations from the Esa juice mission, which is currently on its way to Jupiter.
MMX
I started this article by mentioning how pleased I was to bring back content from Bennu. I will finish it and look forward to more delights to come. I know I mentioned bringing material back from the Moon – but really, I’m much more excited at the prospect of returning material from another moon. The moon in question is Phobos, one of the satellites of Mars.
The launch of the Japanese Space Agency’s Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission to Phobos is currently scheduled for September 2024, and is designed to return material to Earth in 2029.
I will be 70 by the time the subject returns – but, I hope, not too diminished to enjoy the analysis of a unique sample from an enigmatic body.
This article from The Conversation is republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Monica Grady works for the Open University. She receives funding from the UKRI-Science and Technology Facilities Council. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London and Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. She tweets (X’s?) as @MonicaGrady
