Six space missions to look forward to in 2021

Space exploration achieved several notable firsts in 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, including commercial human space flights and the return of samples from an asteroid to Earth.

The coming year promises to be just as interesting. Here are some of the missions to watch out for.

Artemis 1

Artemis 1 is the first flight in the NASA-led international Artemis program to bring astronauts back to the moon by 2024. It will be an unequipped Orion spacecraft that will be sent for a three-week flight around the Moon. It will reach a maximum distance of 450,000 km from Earth – the farthest in space that any spacecraft capable of transporting humans will ever fly.

Artemis 1 will be launched into Earth orbit on the first Nasa space launch system, which will be the most powerful rocket in service. From Earth orbit, the Orion will be propelled on a different path to the Moon by the rocket’s temporary cryogenic propulsion stage. The Orion capsule will then travel to the Moon under the energy provided by a service module provided by the European Space Agency (Esa).

The mission will offer returning engineers a chance to assess the spacecraft’s performance in deep space and serve as a prelude to subsequent manned lunar missions. The launch of Artemis 1 is currently scheduled for the end of 2021.

Missions to Mars

In February, Mars will receive a flotilla of ground robotic guests from several countries. The UAE’s Al Amal (Hope) spacecraft is the Arab world’s first interplanetary mission. It is expected to arrive in orbit of Mars on February 9, where it will spend two years monitoring Martian weather and the endangered atmosphere.

China’s National Space Administration’s Tianwen-1 will arrive a few weeks after Al Amal, consisting of an orbiter and a surface rover. The spacecraft will enter Martian orbit for several months before deploying the rover to the surface. If successful, China will become the third country to land anything on Mars. The mission has several objectives including the mapping of the mineral composition of the surface and the search for underground water deposits.

NASA’s Perseverance rover will land at Jezero Crater on February 18 and search for any signs of ancient life that may have been preserved in the clay deposits. Critically, it will also store a cache of Martian surface samples on board as the first part of 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 of the Indian space program. Composed of an orbiter and a surface penetration probe, the mission was one of the first to confirm the presence of lunar water.

Unfortunately, contact with the satellite was lost less than a year later. Unfortunately, there was a similar crash with its successor, Chandrayaan-2, which consisted of an orbiter, a lander (Vikram) and a lunar rover (Pragyan).

Chandrayaan-3 was announced a few months later. It will consist only of a lander and a rover, as the orbiter from the previous mission is still working and providing data.

If all goes well, the Chandrayaan-3 rover will land in the Aitken basin of the lunar south pole. It is particularly interesting because it is believed to host numerous deposits of groundwater ice – a vital component for any future sustainable lunar habitation.

James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, but has had a difficult path to launch. Originally slated for a 2007 launch, the Webb Telescope is almost 14 years behind schedule and cost around $ 10 billion (£ 7.4 billion) after apparent underestimates and overruns similar to those suffered by Hubble.

While Hubble has provided amazing views of the universe in the visible and ultraviolet light region, Webb plans to focus the observations in the infrared wavelength band. The reason is that when observing very distant objects there will likely be gas clouds on the way.

These gas clouds block very small wavelengths of light, such as x-rays and ultraviolet light, while longer wavelengths such as infrared, microwaves, and radio can pass through. easier. So by observing in these longer wavelengths, we should be seeing more of the universe.

Webb also has a much larger 6.5 meter diameter mirror compared to the Hubble 2.4 meter diameter mirror – essential for improving image resolution and seeing finer details.

Webb’s main mission is to observe the light from galaxies at the edge of the universe which can tell us how the first stars, galaxies and planetary systems were formed. Potentially, this could also include information about the origin of life, as Webb plans to image the atmospheres of exoplanets in great detail, looking for the building blocks of life. Do they exist on other planets, and if so, how did they get there?

We are also likely to be treated with stunning images similar to those produced by Hubble. Webb’s launch on an Ariane 5 rocket is currently scheduled for October 31.