From private flights to missions to the icy moons of Jupiter, up to the launch of the first Chinese space telescope and the first Indian mission with astronauts on board: the 2023 'space' calendar is already full of events.
The first appointment, as reported by the British magazine All About Space, is scheduled for February, when the
Gaganyaan
shuttle , of the Indian Space Agency, will carry
three astronauts into orbit for seven days
.
It will be
the first time for India
and, as is the case for the International Space Station and the Chinese pearl Tiangong, the Indian shuttle will also reach low orbit, about 400 kilometers from the Earth's surface.
SpaceX
's
Polaris Dawn
mission is scheduled for March
, which will fly for five days with a crew made up entirely of private citizens.
Participants are also preparing to complete the first commercial spacewalk, which will take place 700 kilometers from Earth.
In April it will be the turn of
Juice
, the mission of the
European Space Agency (ESA)
which will undertake a seven-year journey to reach
Jupiter
and three of its icy moons:
Europa
,
Callisto
and
Ganymede
.
The mission will be the first to closely study the latter, the only one in the Solar System to have its own magnetic field, before destroying itself on impact on its surface.
In the same month,
Australia
is preparing to become the twelfth country to launch
its own rocket
, built by the private company Gilmour Space Technologies.
In mid-2023, another private SpaceX mission is preparing to reach the International Space Station with a crew of four, who are expected to remain on board for 10 days.
Meanwhile, the
Virgin Galactic
company is preparing the first
suborbital flight
with four passengers on board, who will thus be able to experience the effects of microgravity in a journey lasting about 90 minutes.
Tickets sold for $450,000.
The Russian mission
Luna 25
is scheduled for July
, initially scheduled to depart in 2022, which will bring a robotic vehicle to the lunar south pole to experiment with soft landing technology and study the soil and atmosphere.
However, the chances that the conflict with Ukraine will cause the mission to be postponed further are high.
NASA's Osiris-Rex
mission is expected to
return to Earth on
September 24
, which in 2020 managed to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu.
If all goes according to plan, the vehicle will parachute the champion over the Utah desert (USA) in September.
The event will keep you in suspense until the very last minute as a small error in reentry timing, speed or angle is enough to miss your target or cause the destruction of your precious cargo.
Another mission dedicated to an asteroid will start soon after: the launch of NASA 's
Psyche
is scheduled for October , which will reach the
asteroid
of the same name in 2029 with the aim of studying its particular composition of nickel and iron.
The end of 2023 will also be full of appointments. In December,
China
should launch its first large
space telescope
, called
Xuntain
, which means 'space sentinel'.
With a life expectancy of 10 years, its main mirror will be two meters wide, allowing it to study a region of the sky 300 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA and ESA.
In the same month, NASA 's
Juno
probe will make a flyby of
Io
, one of Jupiter's moons, at about 1,500 kilometers away: it will be the first close encounter with the Jovian moon for more than 20 years.
Also scheduled for the end of the year is a new launch attempt of the Scottish company
Skyrora
rocket , from the SaxaVord base, under construction on the Shetland Islands;
a second spaceport, which aims to be the 'greenest' in the world, is planned in the Scottish Highlands.
