- 4297 -
SPACE MISSIONS - in
2024. - Especially to the Moon. The safe return of NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission
from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September, 2023 received a few precious crumbs
of Bennu to study.
-
------------------------- 4297 - SPACE MISSIONS - in 2024.
- The “Commercial
Lunar Payload Service” (CLPS) missions, many of which will launch in 2024, are
set to bring a variety of instruments to the Moon. These missions are built and
launched by different private companies under contract from NASA.
-
- The CLPS program
is part of NASA’s Artemis initiative to continue human exploration of the Moon.
One of the main aims of the program is to investigate the possibilities of
using lunar resources as fuel. Some of
the instruments on CLPS-1, Peregrine,
are designed to assess the amount of hydrogen on the lunar surface.
-
- CLPS-2 is
timetabled to launch in early January 2024, and there are four other CLPS
missions planned for launch throughout the year. It is hoped that human exploration of the
Moon will take a small step forward, possibly as early as November 2024, when
Artemis II orbits the Moon for several days.
-
- NASA’s
Trailblazer mission travels to the Moon to understand where any water is
situated. Is it locked inside rock as part of the mineral structure, or is it
deposited as ice on the rocky surface?
-
- Trailblazer is
currently scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2024. However, no
precise date has been confirmed. It’s a small mission, part of the Artemis
human lunar exploration program.
-
- The launch of
“Chang’e 6”, the latest Chinese mission to the Moon, is planned for May 2024
and is intended to bring material back to Earth. This is particularly
significant because the spacecraft will collect material from the lunar
farside, the South Pole Aitkin Basin.
-
- This is a region
where it is believed there is abundant frozen water. We do not have any samples
of material from this part of the Moon.
Although any ice will be long gone by the time the samples are back on
Earth, it is anticipated we will learn a lot about this unexplored region and
its potential as a source of water for human visitors.
-
- In September, 2022, NASA’s “Dart” mission encountered a
system consisting of two asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed
into Dimorphos (the junior partner). The impact had a purpose: to see if such a
collision could divert the asteroid in its path. This is a necessary goal if ever Earth were to
be the target of a direct hit by an incoming asteroid.
-
- Two years later,
the European Space Agency’s “Hera” mission will launch to visit the same pair
of asteroids. It is not designed to hit either body, but to measure the effect
of Dart’s earlier impact. At the time of the collision, the orbit of Dimorphos
around Didymos got faster by 33 minutes, a significant movement that showed the
path of an asteroid could be deflected.
-
- But what we don’t
know (and won’t until Hera arrives in 2026) is how effective the impact was.
Has Dimorphos remained in its new orbit, bounced back into its old orbit, or
continued to speed up? Hera will investigate in detail – and its results will
help to define Earth’s planetary defence protocol. Assuming, that is, we take
notice.
-
- “Europa Clipper”
mission has been long-awaited, ever since the Galileo mission first showed us
views of Europa’s icy surface in the late 1990s. Since then, we have learned
about the ocean that lurks beneath the icy shell. Excitingly, Europa may host
life in the form of a substantial fauna analogous to the animals that live on
the deep ocean floor around hydrothermal vents.
-
- Europa Clipper
will fly past Europa between 40 and 50 times, taking detailed images of the
surface, monitoring the satellite for icy plumes, and, looking to see whether this moon has the
conditions suitable to support life. The mission will also investigate whether
Europa’s ocean is salty, and whether the essential building blocks of life
(carbon, nitrogen and sulphur) are present.
-
- It is not until
2030 that any of these observations will be transmitted back to us, so we will
have to wait patiently until then. The investigation will be complemented by
observations from ESAs Juice mission, which is currently on its way to Jupiter.
-
- The launch of the
Japanese Space Agency’s “Martian Moon Exploration” (MMX) mission to Phobos is
currently scheduled for September 2024, and designed to return material to
Earth in 2029.
-
-
December 30, 2023
SPACE MISSIONS
- in 2024. 4297
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Saturday, December 30, 2023 ---------------------------------
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