Next year will undoubtedly be packed with exciting spaceflight missions, from highly anticipated rocket launches to incredible moon missions - including some involving lunar landers and crewed flights - a new Jupiter probe heading into the far-flung and even a demonstration flight of a new International Space Station supply spacecraft. With that in mind, here are a few specific missions we're looking forward to in 2024.
1. Moon missions
A company called Astrobotic technology is also targeting the moon next year, with plans to launch its first lunar lander on January 8, followed by a landing attempt on February 23. The Peregrine falcon lunar lander will carry 20 commercial and government payloads, including a small lunar rover developed by scientists at Carnegie Mellon University and a series of smaller rovers supplied by the Mexican Space Agency.
Chinas Chang'e 6 mission is expected to launch in 2024, representing the country's second sample return mission. The lander will collect material from the South Pole-Aitken Basin (SPA) on the far side of the moon. This mission follows the successful Chang'e 5-moon sample return mission, which launched in 2020.
As he ventured some 6,400 miles (10,300 kilometers) beyond the far side of the moon, Artemis 2 The mission represents the first manned mission beyond low Earth orbit since then Apollo 17 in 1972. The Artemis 2 crew includes a NASA commander Reid WisemanNASA pilot Victor Glover (the first person of color to leave low Earth orbit), NASA mission specialist Christina Koch (the first woman to make the journey) and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (the first non-American to make the trip).
3. Vulcan Centaur Missile
After multiple delays over five years, the first flight of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) has been completed Vulcan Centaur missile is scheduled for January 8. The rocket was fully assembled in Cape Canaveral, Florida, in preparation for launch inaugural flight which will carry multiple payloads, including Astrobotic Technology's aforementioned Peregrine lunar lander.
The Vulcan Centaur is 62 meters tall and is the successor to ULA's Atlas V and Delta IV rockets with an advanced capability to deliver a payload of up to 7.7 tons to geostationary orbit. Before launch on January 8, the rocket will also carry a payload of the room memorial company Celestis, which contains the remains of cast members from the original" Star Trek "television series - Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley and James Doohan - as well as series creator Gene Roddenberry, his wife Majel Barrett Roddenberry and returning series actor Majel Barrett Roddenberry.
4. Sierra Space dream fighter
5. Polaris dawn
The Polaris Dawn mission - a private human spaceflight mission conducted by SpaceX on behalf of Jared Isaacman, the founder of payment provider Shift4 - will launch no earlier than April 2024. Isaacman and three others will spend several days in low Earth orbit on a Crew Dragon spacecraft.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in the Polaris programwhich aims to conduct scientific experiments, raise money for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and produce the first commercial film spacewalk using spacesuits designed by SpaceX. The crew of Polaris Dawn is commanded by Isaacman and includes an experienced astronaut and businessman, two SpaceX personnel with experience in manned and unmanned launches and mission operations, and a former fighter pilot.
6. Spaceship IFT-3
SpaceXs Starship rocket prepares for its third flight, IFT-3, in the first quarter of 2024. Ship 28 and Booster 10's IFT-3 aims to validate critical technologies essential for future lunar and interplanetary missions. This mission follows the company's second flight test (IFT-2) on November 18, 2023, which showed successful hot-staging but experienced telemetry loss after eight minutes of flight. Each flight test provides valuable data from which the company can learn and adapt future efforts. That said, a critical test is planned for IFT-3's propellant transfer using two different tanks within Starship.
The European Space Agency (ESA) wants to launch its own program Ariane 6 rocket mid-2024. Recent tests were completed on December 7 and 15, preparing to launch the rocket for its inaugural flight. While the December 7 test of the rocket's upper stage was aborted shortly after what appeared to be a normal launch, the December 15 test of the rocket's core and upper stage went smoothly.
The practice session countdown proceeded as planned, ending with a four-second firing of the core stage's Vulcain 2.1 engine. The cause of the abort during the December 7 test is still under investigation and an update is expected in mid-January. However, ESA does not expect this to impact the Ariane 6 schedule, as additional tests of the rocket's launch system are planned for early 2024.
8. Launch of the new Glenn's ESCAPAGE
The first launch of Blue origin'S New Glenn rocket looks promising for 2024 after a long history of delays since 2020. The two-stage heavy-lift rocket is over 98 meters tall and has the capacity to carry almost 45 tons of payload to lowland. Earth's orbit. The New Glenn is designed as a reusable launch vehicle for up to 25 missions. Scheduled for its maiden flight, NASA's Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission is scheduled to study Mars' magnetosphere.
This ESCAPADE mission consists of two identical small spacecraft that will simultaneously collect two-point observations to better understand how energy and plasma enter and leave space magnetosphereand how they deal with it solar wind. It will take about eleven months for the ESCAPADE probes to arrive Mars after launch.
9. Europa Clipper
NASA plans to send a spacecraft to explore Jupiter's moon Europe in 2024. Aptly named the Europa Clipperthe spacecraft will study the icy Jovian moon to determine whether the subsurface ocean is habitable. The launch is scheduled for October 6, 2024, on top of a SpaceX Falcon heavy rocket and arrives at Jupiter on April 11, 2030.
10. Boeing Starliner
Boeing is having trouble with it delays to launch its first crewed test flight in years. The company announced that the vehicle will be ready in March; However, NASA ultimately determines the timing of the launch, and due to space station traffic, the opportunity for Starliner to ascend to the orbiting laboratory will not be until April 2024.
