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Space launch schedule: what missions will there be in the coming years

2022-08-30T14:41:47.362Z


Here is a schedule of space launches planned for the next few years that will take humans to the Moon and beyond.


Do humans return to the Moon?

That's right Artemis I 3:25

(CNN Spanish) --

Artemis, NASA's program to return humans to the Moon, is one of the most anticipated missions by space enthusiasts, but it is far from the only one.

In the coming years, the technology will also advance the exploration of Venus, Mars and Saturn, among other celestial bodies.

Here, a review of the main missions prepared by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), among others, for the remainder of the current decade... and a little more.

2022: a fleet of robots to the Moon

Starting this year and running through 2025, NASA will oversee eight missions to the Moon as part of its CLPS program, which seeks to send a fleet of robotic spacecraft to the satellite, according to The Planetary Society.

The agency has funded commercial companies to build and operate such robots capable of autonomous landing.

This 2022, the instrument landing will be in Oceanus Procellarum, a dark lava plain.

The equipment will include cameras to record the impact of the landing on the surface, which will help the agency understand how rockets interact with lunar dust and work to protect both the ground and the spacecraft.

This year, moreover, for the first time a private Japanese mission will land on the Moon.

The HAKUTO-R program will use a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX – Elon Musk's company – for its 2022 journey and in 2024 it plans to deploy a rover on the lunar surface, according to information from the ispace agency.

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("Hakuto" means white rabbit in Japanese. A traditional Japanese legend says that a white rabbit lives on the Moon and that is why the name of the program was chosen, one of the finalists of a competition organized by Google for the assembly of the first mission private lunar exploration).

2023: the sights on Jupiter

Juice, the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, will begin its mission in 2023 to make detailed observations of the planet and its three large oceanic moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, according to the agency.

The objective is to explore the possibility of life on these moons, which are the size of dwarf planets and are covered by an icy crust, as explained by the Airbus company.

The Moon will also continue to be studied.

NASA's Lunar Trailblaizer mission, scheduled for the second half of the year according to the agency, will study how much water is on the Moon, in what form and how it is distributed.

2024: the Moon, Venus and Mars at the center of missions

In 2024 the Artemis program will have a new milestone: Artemis II, the first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft around the Moon.

The Artemis II crew will travel some 7,500 km beyond the far side of the Moon and then return.

"Instead of requiring propulsion to return, the low-energy trajectory takes advantage of the Earth-Moon gravitational field, ensuring that after its trip around the far side of the Moon, Orion will naturally be pulled by Earth's gravity." for the return of astronauts home.

The space agency expects the mission to last 10 days.

This is how NASA will celebrate more than half a century of the arrival of man on the Moon 1:23

NASA will also send the Viper mission to the Moon to map water on the satellite.

The rover, which is the size of a golf cart, will explore the south pole for at least 100 days, according to The Planetary Society, and will reveal the state of the water in regions that are always in shadow.

Getting more detailed information about this resource, especially how accessible it is, is key to NASA's goal of achieving a sustainable human presence on the Moon.

"Information about the exact nature of water at the Moon's poles is so crucial, both from a scientific and exploratory point of view, that many other countries are planning missions like VIPER, the first of which is the joint Japanese rover- Indian LUPEX, whose launch is planned for after 2024", explains the organization.

But there will not only be missions to the Moon.

India plans to launch a Venus orbiter in December to map the planet's surface.

And two 2024 missions will focus on Mars.

On the one hand, two twin orbiters called Escapade, financed by NASA, will be launched to study the planet's history and atmosphere.

To this will be added the Japanese mission Martian Moons eXploration, whose objective will be to obtain samples from the Mars satellite Phobos and bring them to Earth.

2025: the year of Artemis III

Artemis III, scheduled for late 2025, will land the first woman and next man on the satellite's south pole, where permanently shadowed regions may harbor ice and other resources that could sustain astronauts during long moonwalks. .

The Artemis program is aimed at establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon and installing an orbiting lunar outpost called the Gateway.

In 2025, moreover, NASA will launch Solar Cruiser, a mission that aims to test a solar sail in an artificial orbit between the Sun and the Earth.

Solar sails are, according to The Planetary Society, ships that use sunlight for propulsion.

This means that they never run out of fuel and therefore can potentially reach hitherto inaccessible destinations.

The sail for this mission will be the largest to date: it will cover an area equivalent to more than six tennis courts.

2027: understanding our history on Saturn

NASA will launch Dragonfly, a mission aimed at Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

The atmosphere of this moon is similar to that of Earth 3.5 billion years ago, when life arose, explains The Planetary Society.

Studying its physical substances and those on the surface, therefore, could help us understand what the "initial ingredients" of life on Earth were.

DAVINCI, the NASA mission that will study Venus 0:48

2028-2031: Understanding Venus

NASA's DAVINCI mission will explore the atmosphere of Venus and its geological features.

It will be the first mission to visit the atmosphere of this planet since 1984, according to The Planetary Society.

"Most of our research on Venus is based on observations from the 1970s, so this mission has the potential to revolutionize our understanding of the neighboring world," explains the organization.

In 2028, NASA will launch another mission to Venus: VERITAS, whose objective is to unravel the past of the neighboring planet to understand how a habitable planet became infernal.

The European agency will launch its own mission to Venus in 2031. Like NASA, ESA's goal with EnVision is to study the planet's past and understand how it evolved so differently from the land we inhabit.

According to The Planetary Society, it will allow us to understand how similar planets might evolve, how likely they are to support life, and how we should define habitable zones around stars.

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Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2022-08-30

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