The year 2023 proved to be a big year for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample of an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the moon’s south pole, and 2024 will be another exciting year for space exploration.
Several new missions under NASA’s Artemis plan and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will target the moon.
The second half of the year will see several exciting launches, with the Martian Moons eXploration mission launching in September, Europa Clipper and Hera in October, and Artemis II and VIPER to the moon in November – if all goes according to plan.
I’m a planetary scientist and here are six of the space missions I’m excited to follow in 2024.
1. Europa Clipper
NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon, with a surface of ice. Under its icy shell, Europa likely harbors a saltwater ocean, which scientists expect to contain more than twice as much water as all the oceans here on Earth combined.
With Europa Clipper, scientists want to investigate whether the European ocean could be a suitable habitat for extraterrestrial life.
The mission plans to do this by flying past Europa nearly 50 times to study the moon’s icy shell, surface geology and subsurface ocean. The mission will also look for active geysers spouting from Europe.
This mission will be a game changer for scientists who want to understand ocean worlds like Europa.
The launch window – the period in which the mission could launch and reach its planned route – starts on October 10, 2024 and lasts 21 days. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030.
2. Launch of Artemis II
The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to return to the moon. It will send people to the moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. Artemis also includes plans for a longer-term, long-term presence in space, which will prepare NASA to eventually send humans even further – to Mars.
Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with four astronauts on board during the 10-day mission.
The mission builds on Artemis I, which sent an unmanned capsule into orbit around the moon in late 2022.
Artemis II will take the astronauts into orbit around the moon before returning home. The launch is currently scheduled for November 2024. But there is a chance that the launch will be postponed until 2025, depending on whether all necessary equipment, such as space suits and oxygen equipment, is ready.
3. VIPER to look for water on the moon
VIPER, which stands for Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, is a golf cart-sized robot that NASA will use to explore the moon’s south pole in late 2024.
Originally scheduled for launch in 2023, NASA postponed the mission to conduct more testing on the lander system, which Astrobotic, a private company, developed as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that easily evaporate, such as water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures. These materials could provide raw materials for future human exploration of the moon.
The VIPER robot will rely on batteries, heat pipes and radiators during its 100-day mission as it navigates everything from the extreme heat of Monday light – when temperatures can reach 107 degrees Celsius – to the frigid shadow regions of the moon that can reach a mind-boggling -400 F (-240 C).
VIPER is scheduled for launch and delivery to the lunar surface in November 2024.
4. Lunar Trailblazer and PRIME-1 missions
NASA recently invested in a class of small, low-cost planetary missions called SIMPLEx, which stands for Small, Innovative Missions for PLAnetary Exploration. These missions save costs by joining other launches as a so-called rideshare or secondary payload.
An example is the Lunar Trailblazer. Just like VIPER, Lunar Trailblazer will look for water on the moon.
But while VIPER will land on the moon’s surface and study a specific area near the south pole in detail, Lunar Trailblazer will orbit the moon, measure the surface temperature and plot the locations of water molecules around the world mapping.
Lunar Trailblazer is currently on track to be ready in early 2024.
However, because it is a secondary payload, Lunar Trailblazer’s launch time depends on the launch readiness of the primary payload. The PRIME-1 mission, scheduled for launch in mid-2024, is the ride of Lunar Trailblazer.
PRIME-1 will drill into the moon – it’s a test run for the kind of drill VIPER will use. But the launch date will likely depend on whether previous launches happen on time.
A previous Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission with the same landing partner was postponed until February 2024 at the earliest, and further delays could push back PRIME-1 and Lunar Trailblazer.
5. JAXA’s Mars Moon eXploration mission
While Earth’s moon is expecting many visitors in 2024 – large and small, robotic and manned – the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos will soon receive visitors as well. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, is developing a robotic mission called the Martian Moon eXploration, or MMX, scheduled for launch around September 2024.
The main scientific goal of the mission is to determine the origin of the moons of Mars. Scientists are unsure whether Phobos and Deimos are former asteroids that Mars’ gravity brought into orbit, or whether they were formed from debris already in orbit around Mars.
The spacecraft will spend three years orbiting Mars, conducting scientific operations to observe Phobos and Deimos. MMX will also land on the surface of Phobos and collect a sample before returning to Earth.
6. ESA’s Hera mission
Hera is a European Space Agency mission to return to the asteroid system Didymos-Dimorphos that NASA’s DART mission visited in 2022.
But DART not only visited these asteroids, but also collided with one of them to test a planetary defense technique called “kinetic impact.” DART hit Dimorphos with such force that it actually changed its trajectory.
The kinetic impact technique hits something against an object to change its path. This could be useful if humanity ever finds a potentially dangerous object on a collision course with Earth and needs to reroute it.
Hera will be launched in October 2024 and will make its way to Didymos and Dimorphos in late 2026, where it will study the physical properties of the asteroids.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit organization providing facts and analysis to help you understand our complex world.
It was written by: Ali M. Bramson, Purdue University.
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Ali M. Bramson receives funding from NASA.