It will be a great time for space missions in 2024 – especially to the moon, our nearest neighbor. And that’s a continuation of an already epic 2023.
I am a laboratory scientist, so I always want to have a “good” sample to analyze. Instead of peering through telescopes to look at the stars, I prefer to see them in a vial in my laboratory. My favorite technique is to burn the material to ash, while measuring the organic compounds and other species released in the process.
So it was a great pleasure to see the safe return of NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023. It was an even greater pleasure to receive some precious crumbs from Bennu to study.
CLPS missions
NASA’s series of Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) missions, many of which will launch in 2024, will deliver a variety of instruments to the moon. These missions are built and launched by various private companies under contract to NASA.
The CLPS program is part of NASA’s Artemis initiative to continue human exploration of the moon. One of the main objectives of the program is to explore the possibilities of using lunar resources as fuel. That’s why some instruments on CLPS-1, also known as Peregrine, are designed to assess the amount of hydrogen on the moon’s surface. My colleagues at the Open University have even built an instrument for this.
CLPS-2 is scheduled to launch in early January 2024, with four other CLPS missions planned for launch throughout the year. That’s the good thing about the moon: it’s so close that you don’t have to worry much about launch windows (no complicated orbits to calculate) or the distance to travel.
In fact, it is hoped that human exploration of the moon will take a small step forward, possibly as soon as November 2024, when Artemis II orbits the moon for several days. One of the astronauts on board will be a woman – definitely a giant leap in what has until now been an all-male exploration of our nearest neighbor.
Pioneer
Continuing the moon theme, NASA’s Trailblazer mission travels to the moon to understand where water is located. Is it locked into the rocks as part of the mineral structure, or is it deposited as ice on the rocky surface?
Trailblazer is currently scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2024. However, no precise date has been confirmed. It’s a small mission, part of the Artemis human lunar exploration program.
Change 6
Chang’e 6, China’s latest mission to the moon, is scheduled to launch in May 2024 and aims to return material to Earth. This is especially important because the spacecraft will collect material from the far side of the moon: the Aitkin Basin at the south pole.
It is believed that this is a region where there is abundant frozen water. We have no samples of material from this part of the moon – and although the ice will be long gone by the time the samples return to Earth, it is expected that we will learn a lot about this unexplored area and its potential as a source of water for human visitors.
Hera
In September 2022, NASA’s Dart mission encountered a system consisting of two asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed into Dimorphos (the junior partner). The impact had a purpose: to see if such a collision could knock the asteroid into its path — a necessary goal if Earth were ever the target of a direct hit from an incoming asteroid.
Two years later, the European Space Agency’s Hera mission will launch to visit the same pair of asteroids. It is not designed to hit either body, but to measure the effect of Dart’s previous impact. At the time of impact, Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos accelerated by 33 minutes – a significant movement that showed that an asteroid’s path could be deflected.
But what we don’t know (and won’t until Hera arrives in 2026) is how effective the impact was. Did Dimorphos stay in his new job, return to his old job, or keep accelerating? Hera will investigate this in detail – and the results will help define Earth’s planetary defense protocol. Assuming that means we take note.
Europa Clipper
Almost at the same time as Hera, a NASA flagship mission is launched: the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.
This mission has been highly anticipated since the Galileo mission first showed us views of Europe’s icy surface in the late 1990s. Since then we have learned about the ocean that lies beneath the icy shell. Excitingly, Europa may harbor life in the form of substantial fauna, analogous to those that live on the deep ocean floor around hydrothermal vents.
Europa Clipper will fly past Europa between 40 and 50 times, taking detailed images of its surface, monitoring the satellite for icy plumes – and, most importantly, seeing if this moon has the conditions suitable to support life. The mission will also investigate whether the European ocean is salty and whether the essential building blocks of life (carbon, nitrogen and sulphur) are present.
Unfortunately, these observations won’t be returned to us until 2030, so we’ll have to wait patiently until then. The research will be supplemented with observations from Esa’s Juice mission, which is currently en route to Jupiter.
MMX
I started this article by stating my joy at the return of Bennu material. I will finish it with my anticipation of further pleasures to come. I know I mentioned the return of material from the moon, but in fact I’m much more excited about the prospect of material returning from another moon. The moon in question is Phobos, one of Mars’ satellites.
The Japanese Space Agency’s Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission to Phobos is currently scheduled to launch in September 2024 and aims to return material to Earth in 2029.
I’ll be seventy by the time the material comes back, but I hope I’m not too decrepit to enjoy analyzing a unique sample of an enigmatic body.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Monica Grady works for the Open University. She receives funding from the UKRI-Science and Technology Facilities Council. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum in London and Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. She tweets (X’s?) as @MonicaGrady