The science of 2022 will have to deal with the Omicron variant, of which there are still many things to understand, and with the developments of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it will also be grappling with the return to the Moon and new missions to the search for life on Mars, while the return to operation of the largest particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider (Lhc) of CERN in Geneva, after the technical break will spark new enthusiasm for the exploration of the so-called new physics. These are some of the main appointments of science for the new year, indicated by the journal Nature on its website.
2022 marks the entry into the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic and the most immediate commitment, writes Nature, will be to answer the many questions still open on the Omicron variant. Among these, one of the most important is to understand if it causes a more or less serious disease. Furthermore, the guard must not be lowered against the possible appearance of new variants of the SarsCoV2 virus and the long-term effects of the disease, that is the condition called long Covid, must continue to be studied.
The biggest challenge of the new year, however, is to make vaccines available to the entire world population, eliminating the gap that currently separates rich countries from poorer ones. Researchers from around the world have repeatedly indicated this as the crucial step to curb the circulation of the virus. Among the vaccines, the first ones with specific mRna for the variants of the SarsCoV2 virus are also expected, as well as new anti-Covid protein and DNA vaccines.
2022 is also the year of the return to the Moon, with the first Artemis missions and preparations to build the first space station in the lunar orbit, Gateway. India's new mission to the Moon is also planned, the Chandrayaan-3, which intends to bring a rover to lunar soil. This is also the goal of the Japanese Slim mission, and of the Russian Luna 25, and Korea is ready to debut on the Moon, with the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter. The Japanese private company ispace is preparing to take the UAE rover to the moon, while the American companies Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines will bring NASA instruments to the lunar surface.
Great expectations in 2022 also for missions to Mars, the most important of which is ExoMars, of the European (ESA) and Russian (Roscosmos) space agencies, which in September will bring the Rosalind Franklin rover to the red planet, destined to search the traces of a past life thanks to an auger designed and built in Italy.
For physics, the Lhc accelerator will be restarted in June, after the prolonged technical break also due to the pandemic.
The two largest experiments, Atlas and Cms, the same ones that found the Higgs boson, have been enhanced and will allow us to collect data from 40 million proton collisions produced every second.