Damian Sendler: Space exploration is set to begin in 2022 with some of the most fascinating missions. A new mission to investigate an unknown planet will start this year, and a NASA spacecraft will crash into the moon of an asteroid with the intention of taking pictures and doing research experiments. In 2021, there will be a slew of new discoveries from all throughout the solar system, thanks to a slew of new space missions.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Robotic exploration of the moon is being planned for 2022, while governments are preparing for the eventual return of people to the lunar surface. There were three independent expeditions to Mars in 2021, and the curiosity in the fourth planet from the sun is only growing.
As NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter continues to fly far past its planned lifespan, be ready for fresh and fascinating flights. The Perseverance rover will begin exploring the interesting remnants of an ancient river delta on Mars this summer. There may be organic compounds or perhaps microfossils on Mars, which might be discovered via samples obtained there.
In addition, another robotic explorer will land on the red planet’s surface. The first planetary rover built by the European Space Agency (ESA) is now ready for flight.
Damian Sendler
After a cooperative effort by the European Space Agency and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, ExoMars Rosalind Franklin is scheduled to launch in September. Concerns concerning coronavirus and the readiness of spacecraft components prompted the authorities to delay the launch.
The ExoMars rover will arrive on Mars on June 10, 2023, after a nine-month journey from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, in September. Oxia Planum, a region slightly north of the Martian equator, will be the site of the rover’s landing. Approximately 4 billion years ago, layers of clay-rich minerals accumulated in Oxia Planum due to the region’s moist climate.
The goal of the project is to discover whether there is life on Mars and to learn more about its water history. 6.5 feet (2 meters) into the surface of Mars, where the scientists expect to uncover evidence of past life, the rover has the potential to dig.
Expect more breathtaking photographs from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been circling the planet Jupiter since 2016. For the remainder of its mission, the probe will continue to study Jupiter’s 79 moons. In September, it will pass quite near to one of its most intriguing moons, Europa.
Scientists are intrigued by Europa because it has a vast ocean under its icy cover, which may be home to life. In rare occasions, the ice caves in and a plume erupts into space. It is possible for Juno to see these plumes in action.
First scientific data from the James Webb Space Telescope will be available in June and July. Aiming to view farther into the cosmos than ever before, the telescope will peek into the atmospheres of exoplanets.
At the end of this month, NASA plans to launch the Psyche spacecraft, which will spend the next four years exploring the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Metal-rich asteroid will be studied by the expedition, which will only be visible to telescopes on the ground and in orbit.
According to NASA, the strange item may be a remnant of a planet’s metal core or a chunk of primordial material that never melted. Researchers hope that Psyche may provide light on the early stages of the solar system’s development via its presence in their telescopes.
Damian Jacob Sendler
NASA plans to intentionally crash the DART spacecraft into the moon of an asteroid in September in order to modify the trajectory of a near-Earth asteroid.
Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler: As part of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, the tiny moon Dimorphos will be targeted. A full-scale demonstration of this sort of technology for planetary defense will be conducted by the agency. No harm will come to Earth from these two asteroid-moon pairs; nonetheless, they may be used to test out asteroid deflection technologies.
LICIACube, or Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids, an Italian Space Agency-provided cube satellite, will capture images of the impact. Approximately three minutes after it makes contact with Dimorphos, the CubeSat will fly past and begin collecting data.
Elena Adams, a DART mission systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, expects the footage of the impact to be “very spectacular.”
Robots will be sent to the moon by 2022, according to current plans.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, will make a lunar landing in 2022.
In October 2008, India’s first unmanned lunar probe, Chandrayaan, went into orbit. According to NASA, the orbiter was instrumental in discovering water molecules on the moon. Even though the spacecraft went dark in 2009, NASA was able to track its whereabouts as recently as 2017.
After losing touch with Chandrayaan-2, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) attempted to land it near the lunar south pole in 2019. The crash location and debris field were discovered by NASA afterwards.
A communications relay for the Chandrayaan-3 mission will be provided by that project’s orbiter, which is still in orbit around the moon. There will be a lunar lander and rover identical to Chandrayaan-2’s on board this mission.
The Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission will be launched by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in 2022.
An important building block for future lunar exploration missions, the tiny spacecraft will serve as a demonstration of precise landing procedures on the moon, according to NASA. It will also bring back a piece of the Moon to our planet.
Luna-25, Russia’s first lunar mission since 1976, is still on track for 2022, with a target date of 2022. At the Boguslavsky crater on the moon’s south pole, it will be equipped with research equipment and cameras to study the lunar environment.
Human spaceflight preparations
Until 2022, NASA and Roscosmos personnel will continue to return and depart from the International Space Station, while China completes its own space station. In November, the European Space Agency will also reveal its next group of astronauts.
Unmanned Gaganyaan missions are being launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation this year in order to assess the vehicle’s capabilities in advance of the country’s maiden astronaut launch in 2023.
In the meanwhile, NASA’s Artemis program, which is projected to place the first woman and the first person of color on the moon in 2025, will be put to the test in 2022.
“Wet Dress Rehearsal,” as it is known, is a last test that simulates a real launch, including a countdown to liftoff and loading of propellant into the fuel tanks, but without actually going up in flames atop the rocket.
Artemis I, the first unmanned mission in the ambitious program, is expected to launch in March or April.
Damien Sendler: The Orion spacecraft will be launched from the SLS rocket and travel hundreds of miles beyond the moon during the journey. This is the first time that a human-carrying spacecraft has ever flown this far. Orion will splash down in the Pacific Ocean at the conclusion of this mission, which is planned to span a few weeks.
The Quadrantid meteor shower, which will peak between Sunday night and Monday morning, will usher in the new year.
The Quadrantids are one of the most powerful meteor showers of the year, on average. Because the moon is almost completely obscured by a waxing crescent, meteors may be seen at their height.
Because of its brief peak of about six hours, the shower is famously hard to witness in early January. According to the American Meteor Society, it will be best visible in the Northern Hemisphere between Sunday night and Monday morning.
peak that is brief yet strong
For Eastern Asia, the International Meteor Organization has predicted that the peak will come at 20:40 UTC on January 3, which will be best seen. According to the American Meteor Society, higher-latitude Europeans will experience some meteor activity as well.
Because the radiant point of the shower does not reach very high in the Southern Hemisphere’s sky before sunrise, the Quadrantids are seldom observed there.
Take a look at Time and Date to see what your possibilities are or go outdoors and see it for yourself. The shower over Rome will also be streamed live by the Virtual Telescope Project.
It is common to see between 50 and 100 meteors per hour in rural locations, although the peak might reach 120 visible meteors in an hour. Keep an eye on the northeastern sky, and aim your gaze approximately halfway up the horizon there. Meteor shower viewers may get a glimpse of some fiery objects. The American Meteor Society recommends keeping an eye on the sky for at least one hour.
If the name of the meteor shower seems strange, it is probably because it does not sound like it is tied to a constellation, like other meteor showers. This is due to the fact that the constellation that gave its name to the Quadrantids no longer exists, at least not as a recognized one.
An asteroid or “rock comet” rather than an ice comet is the source of the Quadrantid meteor shower, unlike the Geminids. It takes 5.52 years for this asteroid to complete one orbit of the sun.
When just a tiny stream of particles interacts with our atmosphere and the stream happens at a perpendicular angle, the shower’s peak is quite brief. This debris trail is only present for a brief period of time each year when Earth travels through it.
Consider driving to a region that is not overshadowed by lights from the city, so you can get a clearer view of the night sky. If you can locate a place that is not impacted by light pollution, you may be able to see meteors every few minutes from dusk until morning.
Do not forget to wrap up warmly in a location with a clear view of the sky. Make sure you have a comfortable place to sit or a blanket to lie on so you can see well. It is also a good rule of thumb not to glance at your phone for at least 20 to 30 minutes, so your eyes can acclimate to the darkness.
Dr. Damian Jacob Sendler and his media team provided the content for this article.
