\N
A variety of space missions will take place in 2022, which is expected to be a big year for space science and technology. The Moon will be in the spotlight with a plethora of missions, but there will also be many new ventures beyond it.
According to many analysts, however, beyond scientific curiosity and the irresistible attraction that space holds for humans, the growing involvement with space partly masks the avowed or undeclared military and business objectives of a growing number of states, which feel insecure about similar space initiatives by their competitors and perceive that they risk being left behind. In other words, this year space will, for better or worse, become even more a space for commercial activities and military applications.
China in particular makes no secret of its desire to "nibble away" at US space dominance, while Putin's Russia is nostalgic for the space glory of the Soviet Union. Europe is slowly but surely increasing its space "footprint", and so is Japan, which has the terrestrial anxiety of both neighbouring China and North Korea. The United Arab Emirates wants to establish itself as the first space country in the Arab world, Israel wants to go into space for prestige reasons and more, South Korea wants the same (with an eye on nuclear North Korea), while India is stepping up its space ambitions, largely due to geostrategic competition with China and Pakistan.
And of course, above all, the US wants to keep the upper hand in space and for national security reasons, which is why it recently created the Space Force as the newest corps of its armed forces. Until recently, the American commanders of the Space Force considered their "territory" to end 36,000 kilometres above the Earth, at the height of the geostationary satellites. But, following an agreement with NASA, the US return to the Moon from this year has led to an increase of at least 1,000 times the amount of space the US Pentagon believes it should oversee. As the British magazine "Economist" wrote, "even if it ever existed, the age of innocence is now a thing of the past" in space.
Here is a summary of the major space ventures expected in the new year.
Return to the Moon
After the manned US Apollo and Soviet Luna missions of the 1960s and 1970s "cold" war between the then two superpowers, Earth's moon had fallen into relative obscurity. But this will change dramatically in the coming years, starting in 2022, when many countries (USA, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea) and private companies are planning missions to it, starting a new era of lunar exploration with the aim of making a stay on Earth's satellite permanent rather than temporary. NASA alone is supporting at least 18 government and private lunar missions this year.
\NThe largest will be the US space agency's unmanned Artemis 1 mission, the first stage in the return of American astronauts including the first woman to walk on the moon a few years later, although the initial goal of 2024 is probably no longer achievable. Artemis 1, which will take place this spring, will be a test for both the Orion space capsule (Orion) that will be put into this first phase without astronauts orbiting the moon for a few days before returning to Earth with a dip in the Pacific Ocean, and the colossal SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that will carry Orion, which is about 15% more powerful than the Saturn 5 of the Apollo missions. The launch of the SLS rocket in February will be the first major unmanned mission this year, carrying 13 small satellites (cubesats) close to the Moon. This will be followed by the Artemis II mission in 2024, when the SLS will carry Orion with four astronauts around the Moon, before finally in 2025 the Artemis III mission will attempt a landing with a four-man crew that will remain on the Moon for four days. It will be the first step in creating the permanent Artemis base where up to four astronauts can stay for one to two months. However, it is not unlikely that NASA's manned flights to the Moon will eventually be taken over by Ilon Musk's under-construction Space X Starship rocket, which will be more powerful and cheaper than the SLS.
At the same time this year, robotic landers from both the US and other countries will land and walk on the Moon, especially at its south pole, where there is plenty of water in the form of ice in sunless craters. Russia, which as the USSR has eight successful landing missions to its credit, the last being Luna 24 in 1976, will pick up the thread again with the Luna 25 mission in July. The spacecraft will collect a sample of lunar soil (regolith) and bring it back to Earth.
In the second half of 2022, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will make a second landing attempt with the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, following the failure of the previous one in 2019 which crashed on the Moon due to a software error. The Indian rover Vikram, which will be carried to the moon, is this time planned to explore the polar lunar environment.
Vikram is likely to be accompanied by the Peregrine spacecraft of NASA-funded private US company Astrobotic. Peregrine, which has not been tested in space so far, is designed as a platform for carrying all kinds of cargo. On its first lunar mission, in addition to 14 NASA instruments, it will carry not one but six rovers from various organisations. NASA plans to use Peregrine to carry to the Moon the large VIPER rover in 2023, which will search for water. Also the US robotics company Lunar Outpost, following an agreement with NASA, will send a rover in late 2022 to carry 4G communications equipment for the Artemis missions while collecting lunar dust.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will send a rover near the lunar equator, while the United Arab Emirates plans to send its Hakuto-R lander (built by the Japanese company ispace) and Rashid rover (built by the UAE in Dubai) to the moon in the autumn, becoming the first Arab country to do so. The Arab rover will be equipped with the Langmuir scientific instrument, which will be able to measure for the first time the plasma of charged particles sent by the solar wind to the lunar surface. South Korea will make its space premiere in August, in collaboration with NASA, with the launch of the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which will conduct geological analysis from above.
Mars
In September, the European rover Rosalind Franklin will be launched in September to the red planet, where it will arrive in 2023. The ExoMars mission will be a collaboration between ESA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, aiming to search for traces of Martian life. The rover, larger than China's Zhurong but smaller than the US Perseverance, will have several cameras and a drill capable of drilling to a depth of up to two metres into the Oxia Planum region, which may once have had conditions conducive to the growth of life. There is, however, plenty of anxiety about the mission, as both Europe and the Russia-USSR have a history of Mars landing losses. Of the 19 Russian-Soviet missions and the two European missions so far, none have been fully successful. Meanwhile, NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, along with the Ingenuity helicopter, will continue their walks on Mars this year.
Jupiter and its moons
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is scheduled to launch in May and is expected to reach Jupiter in seven years, when it will make successive close flybys of the icy moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, including exploring the possible oceans beneath their icy surfaces, where traces of extraterrestrial life could be found.
Asteroids
In August, NASA's Psyche mission will launch in August, targeting the eponymous ancient and metal-rich asteroid (mainly iron), where it will arrive after four years to photograph it, analyse its chemical composition and measure its internal structure and magnetic field. A more dramatic event in October will be the guided impact of NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Test) spacecraft on the small moon Dimorph of asteroid Gemini, the first planetary defence mission aimed at diverting the course of a potentially threatening asteroid.
Nearby human private spaceflight
2021 was a watershed year for suborbital human spaceflight by private companies, with Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin sending tourists into space for the first time, something they plan to make routine in 2022. This year Boeing will attempt the same with its Starliner spacecraft, which was hit by repeated problems in 2019-2020, making a first unmanned flight in the first half of the year and a second manned flight in the second half of 2022.
The large Vulcan rocket of the US-based United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is primarily responsible for US national security (see military and intelligence) space missions, may also make its maiden voyage this year. A ULA Atlas 5 rocket is also the one that will launch Boeing's Starliner spacecraft to the International Space Station. On the other hand, the question remains whether Space X's very large rocket and Starship, designed to carry people and cargo to the Moon and Mars, will test fly above the atmosphere for the first time this year.
Space Stations
The Chinese Space Agency will continue the piecemeal construction of its own Tiangong Space Station, launched in 2021, adding new sections (science labs) in orbit and possibly making it fully operational. In the autumn of 2022, the French-Italian company Thales Alenia Space will deliver to the US the outer protective envelope of the main section (Habitation and Logistics Outpost-HALO) of Gateway, the lunar space station being designed by NASA with international partners (ESA, JAXA, Canada, etc.). The Gateway, which will be set up in stages over the next few years and will operate from 2024 as an intermediate station between the Earth and the Moon, will launch the Human Landing System (HLS) lunar shuttle that will take astronauts to the Moon once a lunar base has been established there. Initially Gateway will be inhabited for one month a year, then for two months and finally more permanently. The International Space Station (ISS) has been continuously inhabited for 21 years, but it is much closer to Earth, only 400 km away, while the Gateway will be much further away. India's ISRO also has plans for its own space station and, as a first step, will this year make the first unmanned flight of its Gaganyaan-1 spacecraft, intended to carry its first astronauts into orbit in 2023.
Source: APE-MPA
\NContents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times\NViews & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times\NSource