The Future, Part 1: Upcoming Space Missions and Technology
2021 (February 18): NASA’s Perseverance rover lands on Mars. Its job is to study Mars’ geology and prepare rock samples for future missions to bring back to Earth. These rocks would be the first ever brought back from Mars!
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/ -- this link takes you to a NASA webpage where you can see an interactive 3D version of the Perseverance rover
2022 The European Space Agency’s JUICE mission begins. JUICE stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer. Its purpose is to send a space craft to study Jupiter and three of its moons which show the most promise for life: Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa. The spacecraft will take 9 years to arrive!
The JUICE spacecraft will contain 10 different measurement instruments and will travel over 500 million miles to get to its destination!
2024 NASA’s Europa Clipper flies by Europa, a moon of Jupiter. It is likely that Europa contains an underground ocean beneath its icy surface, one that may even contain life!
The Europa Clipper flying by Europa The icy, scratch marked surface of Europa
2024 NASA’s begins its Artemis Mission, which will send two astronauts – one man and one woman – to the Moon’s south pole. This will be the first time since 1972 that mankind has stepped foot on the surface of the moon! The Artemis mission will be the beginning of a new chapter for space exploration. In the years following the Artemis mission, NASA plans on establishing a moon base for future astronauts to live in and to test equipment and technology for future missions to the Moon and even to Mars.
During the Artemis mission, the Gateway will be sent to orbit around the Moon. The Gateway is a space station that will allow astronauts to travel to and from the Moon’s surface, and later, even to Mars.
2024 Space X’s Starship spaceship will arrive on Mars. The Starship will be powered automatically, so there won’t be any astronauts on board. It will be 394 feet tall. Once the Starship arrives on Mars, it will actually refuel using Mars’ own ice and carbon dioxide! In the coming weeks, Space X plans to carry out a test launch of a Starship prototype.
2025 Construction on the Extremely Large Telescope (ETL) in Chile will finally be finished! This extraordinary device will take in 15x more light than any other telescope today and will allow astronomers to explore the universe like never before.
2026 NASA’s Dragonfly space-drone enters Titan’s atmosphere. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and has rivers, lakes, oceans, rain, and clouds like Earth. However, instead of water, these bodies of water are made from methane, a colorless chemical which is found in very small amounts on Earth. The Dragonfly will study Titan’s methane oceans, which could potentially harbor life!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdYeWN9ZivE&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=RealEngineering – Here is video made by NASA which shows a really cool animation of how the Dragonfly will work.
2030 By this year, NASA plans to send men to Mars! The Artemis mission in 2024 will be the first step for doing so. Once on Mars, the astronauts will stay for 30-45 days, testing new equipment, carrying out experiments, and completing other tasks which will pave the way for future mission to Mars.
A prediction of what a Mars mission in 2030 will look like.