Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial spaceflight and the return of samples from an asteroid to Earth.
The coming year is going to be just as interesting. Here are some missions to keep an eye on.
Artemis 1
Artemis 1 is the first flight of the Nasa-led, international Artemis program that will bring astronauts back to the Moon by 2024. It will consist of an unmanned Orion spacecraft sent on a three-week flight around the Moon. IT will reach a maximum distance of the earth of 450,000 km – the farthest space in which any spacecraft that can transport humans has ever flown.
Artemis 1 will be launched on Earth orbit on the first Nasa Space Launch System, which will be the most powerful rocket in operation. From the orbit of the earth, the Orion will be driven on another path to the Moon by the intermediate cryogenic propulsion stage of the rocket. The Orion capsule will then travel to the moon under the power provided by a service module provided by the European Space Agency (ESA).
The mission will provide engineers on Earth with the opportunity to evaluate how the spacecraft performs in deep space and serve as a predictor for later lunar missions. The launch of Artemis 1 is currently scheduled for late 2021.
March shipments
In February, Mars receives a fleet of terrestrial robot guests from various countries. The United Arab Emirates’ spacecraft Al Amal (Hope) is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. It is scheduled to arrive in orbit on Mars on February 9, where it will spend two years monitoring the Martian weather and the disappearing atmosphere.
The Chinese National Space Administration, Tianwen-1, will arrive in Al Amal within a few weeks, consisting of an orbit and a surface rover. The spacecraft will enter Mars’ orbit for several months before the rover is deployed to the surface. If it succeeds, China will become the third country to land anything on Mars. The mission has several objectives, including mapping the mineral composition of the surface and searching for underground water deposits.
Nasa’s Perseverance Rover will land at Jezero Crater on February 18, looking for signs of ancient life that could have been preserved in the clay deposits there. It is critical that it will also store a cache of Mars surface samples on board as the first part in a very ambitious international program to return samples from Mars to Earth.
Chandrayaan-3
In March 2021, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) plans to launch its third lunar mission: Chandrayaan-3. Chandrayaan-1 was launched in 2008 and was one of the first major missions in the Indian space program. The mission, which consists of an orbit and a surface penetrator probe, was one of the first to confirm evidence of lunar water.
Unfortunately, contact with the satellite was lost less than a year later. Unfortunately, there was a similar accident with the successor Chandrayaan-2, which consisted of an orbit, a lander (Vikram) and a lunar rover (Pragyan).
Raymond Cassel / Shuttestock
Chandrayaan-3 was announced a few months later. It will only consist of a lander and a rover, as the track of the previous mission still functions and provides data.
If all goes well, the Chandrayaan 3-rover will hit the Aitken basin of the lunar south pole. This is of particular importance because there are likely to be numerous deposits of ice in the groundwater – an important component for any future sustainable lunar habitat.
James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but had a rocky path to be launched. The Webb Telescope, initially scheduled for launch in 2007, is nearly 14 years late and has cost about US $ 10 billion (£ 7.4 billion) after apparent underestimations and overruns similar to those experienced by Hubble.
While Hubble offered stunning views of the universe in a visible and ultraviolet light, Webb plans to focus observations in the infrared wavelength. The reason for this is that there will probably be gas clouds in the road if you observe really distant objects.
Esa / Hubble & Nasa, J. Lee and the PHANGS-HST team;, CC BY-SA
These gas clouds block very small wavelengths of light, such as X-rays and ultraviolet light, while longer wavelengths such as infrared, microwave and radio can penetrate more easily. So by observing in these longer wavelengths, we need to see more of the universe.
Webb also has a much larger mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters compared to Hubble’s mirror with a diameter of 2.4 meters – essential to improve the image resolution and see finer details.
Webb’s primary mission is to look at the light of galaxies at the edge of the universe that can tell us about how the first stars, galaxies, and planetary systems formed. Potentially, it could also contain information about the origin of life, as Webb intends to depict exoplanet atmospheres in depth and search for the building blocks of life. Do they exist on other planets, and if so, how did they get there?
We will probably also be treated to some beautiful images similar to those produced by Hubble. Webb is currently scheduled to launch an Ariane 5 rocket on October 31st.