Most of us will remember 2020 primarily as the year of the great pandemic, but let’s not forget how space exploration and astronomy had good years given the circumstances. NASA astronauts flew into space in May as part of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule. New research revealed that there may be more water on the moon than previously thought. Scientists have debated whether Venus is harboring life in its clouds after discovering phosphine. Betelgeuse continued to weaken, suggesting that it would soon become nova. Researchers noticed an excitingly strange series of radio signals.
While 2021 won’t magically reset our reality, there’s a lot to look forward to next year, especially in space travel news. Even if you’re not a space aficionado, it’s amazing what experiencing a little wonder and awe can do to your mindset. It helps put our place in the world in perspective and reminds us that we are part of something bigger; learning about our universe is a great way to take advantage of that. If you feel like there’s nothing to look forward to next year, consider adding one of these missions to your list.
NASA to launch Q-PACE
Originally scheduled for launch earlier this month, the CubeSat Particle Aggregation and Collision Experiment (Q-PACE) is now scheduled to take off from the Mojave Air and Space Port on January 15, 2021. Q-PACE is a 3U CubeSat, a type of small, modular spacecraft designed to study the collision and aggregation of small particles in a chamber as part of a three-year microgravity experiment. The goal of the mission is to develop a database of small particle interactions in microgravity at low speed. This information will help researchers better understand the process of early coagulation that led to planet formations.
“The Q-PACE mission will last up to three years and provide the opportunity to study adhesion and fragmentation events that rarely occur, such as a near-simultaneous collision of three or more particles,” NASA explains about the mission. “The mission is progressing in several phases with the introduction of different types of particles into the ETC, starting with large solid spherical particles and ending with aggregates of micron-sized dust and chondrules.”
Mars2020 finally gets to work
2021 will mark the beginning of a new chapter in discoveries on Mars. During the summer, the mission Mars 2020 launched into space. But come on February 18, 2021, the Perseverance robber will eventually land on the Jezero Crater of Mars. Its mission is expected to last 687 Earth days, or one Earth year.
According to NASA, the primary scientific goals of Mars 2020 are “ to identify past environments that may support microbial life, look for signs of possible past microbial life, collect samples of nuclear rock and regolith and store them on the surface for future missions, and oxygen testing. production from the Martian atmosphere. ”
One of the most exciting parts of the mission is that the collected samples are returned to Earth. Sample return missions are extremely unusual due to their cost; in particular, there has never been an example of a return mission from another planet.
Returning samples from Mars to Earth has been a goal of planetary scientists since the early days of the space age, and the successful completion of this MSR [Mars Sample Return] key decision point is an important next step in turning this goal into reality, ” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters. “MSR is a complex campaign and it captures the essence of groundbreaking space exploration – pushing the boundaries of what is possible and, in that way, expanding our understanding of our place in the universe.”
As part of the Mars2020 mission, NASA will also include the Ingenuity rover’s helicopter to study Mars’s atmosphere. This will help NASA study how oxygen can be produced from Mars’ carbon dioxide atmosphere, an important step for the future of human exploration on Mars.
The Parker Solar Probe will make two more Venus flybys
The car-sized probe, launched in 2018, is scheduled to make its fourth and fifth Venus flybys in February and October, respectively, in 2021. The two flybys are part of a longer journey to get as close as possible. to get to the sun. in 2025.
As before Salon explainedthese flybys are unique in that they use Venus’s gravity to slow the probe before arriving in a narrow orbit around the sun. The probe will do seven flybys for seven years.
“Although it sounds bizarre, the laws of physics allow two objects of mass to exchange their momentum in a way that speeds up one and slows the other,” Salons Keith Spencer explained earlier. “This method often used to send spacecraft to far reaches of the solar system without using as much fuel to accelerate as would otherwise be the case.”
Launch of James Webb Space Telescope
As of October 31, 2021, it was nearly $ 9 billion James Webb space telescope – the successor to the Hubble telescope – will be launched from a port near Kourou, French Guiana. Its mission is to observe the first galaxies to form in the early universe, in addition to seeing stars that form planetary systems. According to NASA, it will be the most important observatory of the 2020s, helping thousands of astronomers around the world.
“[James Webb] will study how the first stars were very different from the stars around us, because there were no metals that make up the stars of today, ” said Massimo Stiavelli, Mission Head, Space Telescope Science Institute, in an interview with NasaSpaceflight.com. “Stars had to make it. [James Webb] is the only telescope designed to study those early eras. “
The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper will map water on the moon
Scientists previously suspected that water existed in the shady, cold parts of the moon – such as the poles, where it would remain frozen – but a few studies published in 2020 confirmed that there is also a large amount of water in the sunlit areas. The Lunar Polar Hydrogen Mapper (LunaH-Map) will increase our knowledge of water on the moon by orbiting the moon with the aim of determining how much water ice exists in the permanently shaded polar craters on the moon. It will do this by using a miniaturized neutron spectrometer to count epithermal neutrons. The shoebox-sized spacecraft will be launched by November 2021.