This article was initially featured in The Conversation.
The yr 2023 proved to be an necessary one for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a pattern from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the lunar south pole, and 2024 is shaping as much as be one other exciting yr for space exploration.
Several new missions underneath NASA’s Artemis plan and Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will goal the Moon.
The latter half of the yr will function a number of 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 the pieces goes as deliberate.
I’m a planetary scientist, and right here are six of the space missions I’m most excited to observe in 2024.
1. Europa Clipper
NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which can discover one among Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is barely smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a floor fabricated from ice. Beneath its icy shell, Europa possible harbors a saltwater ocean, which scientists count on comprises over twice as a lot water as all the oceans right here on Earth mixed.
With Europa Clipper, scientists need to examine whether or not Europa’s ocean could possibly be an appropriate habitat for extraterrestrial life.
The mission plans to do that by flying previous Europa practically 50 instances to review the moon’s icy shell, its floor’s geology and its subsurface ocean. The mission may even look for lively geysers spewing out from Europa.
This mission will change the recreation for scientists hoping to know ocean worlds like Europa.
The launch window–the interval when the mission might launch and obtain its deliberate route–opens Oct. 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. Artemis II launch
The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to return to the Moon. It will ship people to the Moon for the first time since 1972, together with the first girl and the first individual of colour. Artemis additionally contains plans for a longer-term, sustained presence in space that may put together NASA for ultimately sending individuals even farther–to Mars.
Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with 4 astronauts deliberate to be on board throughout the 10-day mission.
The mission builds upon Artemis I, which despatched an uncrewed capsule into orbit round the Moon in late 2022.
Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit round the Moon earlier than returning them dwelling. It is presently deliberate for launch as early as November 2024. But there’s a probability it’s going to get pushed again to 2025, relying on whether or not all the vital gear, resembling spacesuits and oxygen gear, is prepared.
3. VIPER to go looking for water on the Moon
VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a robotic the measurement of a golf cart that NASA will use to discover the Moon’s south pole in late 2024.
Originally scheduled for launch in 2023, NASA pushed the mission again to finish extra assessments on the lander system, which Astrobotic, a non-public firm, developed as a part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
This robotic mission is designed to go looking for volatiles, which are molecules that simply vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These supplies might present assets for future human exploration on the Moon.
The VIPER robotic will depend on batteries, warmth pipes and radiators all through its 100-day mission, because it navigates all the pieces from the excessive warmth of lunar daylight–when temperatures can attain 224 levels Fahrenheit (107 levels Celsius)–to the Moon’s frigid shadowed areas that may attain a mind-boggling -400 F (-240 C).
VIPER’s launch and supply to the lunar floor is scheduled for November 2024.
4. Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1 missions
NASA has lately invested in a category of small, low-cost planetary missions referred to as SIMPLEx, which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLanetary Exploration. These missions save prices by tagging alongside on different launches as what is known as a rideshare, or secondary payload.
One instance is the Lunar Trailblazer. Like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the Moon.
But whereas VIPER will land on the Moon’s floor, learning a selected space close to the south pole in element, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the Moon, measuring the temperature of the floor and mapping out the areas of water molecules throughout the globe.
Currently, Lunar Trailblazer is on observe to be prepared by early 2024.
However, as a result of it’s a secondary payload, Lunar Trailblazer’s launch timing will depend on the major payload’s launch readiness. The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for a mid-2024 launch, is Lunar Trailblazer’s experience.
PRIME-1 will drill into the Moon–it’s a take a look at run for the type of drill that VIPER will use. But its launch date will possible rely on whether or not earlier launches go on time.
An earlier Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the identical touchdown associate was pushed again to February 2024 at the earliest, and additional delays might push again PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer.
5. JAXA’s Martian Moon eXploration mission
While Earth’s Moon has many guests–massive and small, robotic and crewed–deliberate for 2024, Mars’ moons Phobos and Deimos will quickly be getting a customer as nicely. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, has a robotic mission in growth referred to as the Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, deliberate for launch round September 2024.
The mission’s major science goal is to find out the origin of Mars’ moons. Scientists aren’t positive whether or not Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that Mars captured into orbit with its gravity or in the event that they shaped out of particles that was already in orbit round Mars.
The spacecraft will spend three years round Mars conducting science operations to look at Phobos and Deimos. MMX may even land on Phobos’ floor and gather a pattern earlier than returning to Earth.
6. ESA’s Hera mission
Hera is a mission by the European Space Agency to return to the Didymos-Dimorphos asteroid system that NASA’s DART mission visited in 2022.
But DART didn’t simply go to these asteroids, it collided with one among them to check a planetary protection approach referred to as “kinetic impact.” DART hit Dimorphos with such power that it really modified its orbit.
The kinetic influence approach smashes one thing into an object in order to change its path. This might show helpful if humanity ever finds a probably hazardous object on a collision course with Earth and must redirect it.
Hera will launch in October 2024, making its approach in late 2026 to Didymos and Dimorphos, the place it’s going to examine bodily properties of the asteroids.
Disclosure: Ali M. Bramson receives funding from NASA.