in strip Space and astronomy2022 is going to be a tough year to beat.
the NASA We loved the cosmic scenes you captured James Space Telescope web. The Dart mission has shifted an asteroid into a new orbit. Artemis me Put humanity on a path back to the moon. China has finished building a new space station in orbit. the SpaceX They fired and shot down 61 rockets in 12 months. and invade Ukraine threatened position Russia as a space force.
There’s a lot to conquer, but 2023 will definitely be some launch pad excitement, at The surface of the moon And in heaven.
New landings on the moon
At least one moon landing attempt guaranteed for 2023. Japanese company ispace Its M1 mission launched on a SpaceX rocket in December. The spacecraft is on a slow, economical route to the moon and is supposed to arrive in April, when it will try to deploy a rover he built Arab Emirates States and a robot made by the Japanese space agency, Jaxa, as well as other payloads.
There may be five more lunar landing attempts this year. NASA has contracted with two private companies to transport payloads to the lunar surface. nope the Intuitive machinesfrom Houston, and Astrobotic technologyfrom Pittsburgh, faced delays in 2022, but will be able to make the trip in the coming months.
It may be accompanied by lunar missions from the space programs of three governments. Chandrayaan-3’s mission India It was delayed last year, but could be ready by 2023. A Japanese mission, the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or Slim, aims to test the country’s lunar landing technologies. Finally, Russia’s Luna-25 mission has been pushed back from September, but Roscosmos space agency may try this year.
New missiles
NASA lifted the giant Space Launch System off Earth for the first time in 2022, lighting up Earth’s night. fl With an incredible stream of flames it carried the Artemis I mission toward the moon. That has drawn attention to SpaceX, which is building a next-generation Starship rocket, which is also key to attempting a manned lunar landing. Artemis IIIfrom NASA.
SpaceX has issued a major environmental overhaul that will allow it to launch an unmanned orbital test flight from southern Texas if it meets certain conditions. But the rocket wasn’t ready in 2022. The company hasn’t yet announced a test date for this year, but regular ground tests of the spacecraft’s equipment indicate it’s working on it.
Several more rockets will be able to fly for the first time in 2023. Most importantly, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur will replace that company’s Atlas V, a staple vehicle for US spaceflight for two decades. Vulcan has a BE-4 engine built by Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos.
Several private US companies are expected to test new missiles in 2023, including Relativity and ABL. They could join foreign manufacturers including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which could test a Japanese H3 rocket in February, and Arianespace, which is working on a test flight of a European Ariane 6 rocket.
New space telescopes
The Webb telescope has wowed space enthusiasts and scientists alike with its views of the universe, but we’ll be able to gain new benefits from a variety of orbiting observatories.
The most important mission may be Xuntian, a Chinese mission that will be like a more advanced version of the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft will survey the universe in optical and ultraviolet wavelengths as it orbits Earth near the Chinese space station Tiangong. The Japanese-led mission, XRISM (pronounced “critic”), could launch as early as the year. The mission will use X-ray spectroscopy to study clouds of plasma, which could help explain the formation of the universe. The European space telescope, Euclid, could also be launched on a SpaceX rocket after the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused the device to lose its place on a Russian Soyuz rocket. He will study the universe’s dark energy and dark matter.
Total eclipse and incomplete eclipse
There will be two solar eclipses in 2023. A total eclipse will be seen on April 20 most often in Southern HemisphereThe moon will only hide the sun in the most remote parts of the world Australia and the Indonesia. (Maybe it’s not a bad time to be on a boat in parts of the Indian and Pacific oceans.)
But Americans may very well be in for a show on October 14, when an annular eclipse visits North America. Eclipses of this type are sometimes called “ring-of-fire” eclipses, because the Moon is too far from the Earth to completely block the Sun, but it creates a ring-like effect when it reaches totality. The path of the eclipse crosses parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, before heading into Central and South America. When the weather cooperates, it should be a big solar show and a good preparation for the April 8, 2024 total eclipse, which will cross the United States from the southwest to the northeast.
New planetary missions
A new spacecraft will head toward Jupiter this year, with the goal of being the first to orbit another planet’s moon. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, or Juice, will be launched from an Ariane 5 rocket on April 5 toward the Jovian system, which will arrive in 2031. Once on the gas giant, it will move on to perform 35 three-way flybys of the planet’s giant moons: Callisto and Europa and Ganymede, which may all have underground oceans, it is thought. In the year 2034, Juice will begin orbiting Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
Closer to the sun will be Rocket Lab, a small launch company founded in New Zealand that intends to use its electronic rocket to send a mission to Venus. The company’s photonic satellite will attempt to deploy a small probe, created with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that will briefly study the planet’s toxic atmosphere. The mission was planned for May, but is expected to encounter delays as the company prioritizes missions for other clients.
Translated by Luis Roberto M. Gonsalves
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