The new year will be exciting for those waiting for humanity’s return to the Moon, a hiatus that by the way completes 50 years in 2022. We still won’t see astronauts leaving footprints on the lunar ground, but there will be important steps, with the first launches of the SLS rockets (taking over an unmanned Orion capsule on a circumlunar flight) and Starship (which SpaceX is developing to serve as a landing module for NASA). The first is “old school” and expensive. The second is revolutionary, risky and can transform space exploration. In short, there is something for everyone. Release dates are not firm, but both should be in the first half.
Two other respectable rockets, but a notch below, that could make their first flights in 2022 are United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn.
For manned flight, we’ll see more of the same — and maybe something new. Crew Dragon (SpaceX), Soyuz (Russia) and Shenzhou (China) are expected to continue their voyages to orbit, and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will continue to launch passengers on suborbital flights. The news may come on account of the CST-100 Starliner (Boeing) and Gaganyaan (India) capsules. Both still need to complete unmanned launches before bringing people aboard. And then there’s the Dream Chaser freighter, a mini-space shuttle from the Sierra Nevada company, which is due to make its first flight to the International Space Station this year, and in the future it may carry astronauts. Let’s see what comes out.
Many unmanned interplanetary voyages will also begin in 2022. To the surface of the Moon, we should have up to three public-private missions, with companies hired by NASA to make “reel” experiments. There is also the Russian promise of Luna-25, resuming a program that had been stopped since 1976. To be checked.
In addition, in May and July, the ESA (European Space Agency) Juice missions, destined for Jupiter (where it should only arrive in 2029), and NASA’s Psyche, destined for one of the belt members, are expected to depart respectively. of asteroids. For Mars, ESA and Roscosmos (Russian agency) should launch, in September, the rover Rosalind Franklin, part of the ExoMars mission. He will join Perseverance in their search for evidence of past life on Mars.
And at the end of September, the American Dart spacecraft, launched in 2021, will collide with a 170-meter space boulder in an experiment to see if we can shift the orbit of an asteroid, if necessary in the future. It’s the first time Earth has the ability to deal with such a threat. Historic.
Finally, let’s not forget about our new darling, the James Webb Space Telescope. If everything works out for him, from the second semester onwards he starts revolutionizing astronomy.
Going over this list, you can’t help but wish a great 2022 to all space exploration enthusiasts. Ad astra!
This column is published on Mondays in Folha Corrida.
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