But for all the achievements of 2021 – which include a rover landing on Mars,a small drone called Ingenuity flying in that planet’s thin atmosphere and,the most powerful space telescope ever – 2022 could hold just as much promise,if not more.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was released about 1400 kilometres above the Earth after a 27-minute hypersonic ride.NASA
If 2021 was the year of the private space tourist,2022 could be marked by the first steps towards a return to the moon,as NASA and the growing space industry seek to maintain the momentum that has been building over the past several years in what has amounted to a renaissance of exploration.
A pair of massive rockets,both more powerful than the Saturn V that flew the Apollo astronauts to the moon,are getting ready to fly in 2022. Those launches would mark the first significant steps in NASA’s Artemis program,which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2025 and create a campaign that would allow a permanent presence on and around the moon.
After years of development,and billions of dollars spent,NASA is finally gearing up to launch its Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule,which are designed to return astronauts to the moon for the first time since Apollo. The first mission,known as Artemis I,is scheduled for March or April and would send Orion,without any crew on board,to orbit around the moon.
If all goes well,it would be followed by Artemis II,in May 2024,which would again send Orion to orbit the moon,but this time with astronauts on board. NASA hopes a crew would be able to land on the moon by 2025,but that would depend on the success of previous flight tests and SpaceX’s ability to get its Starship spacecraft up and running.
One of SpaceX’s Starship during a test in Texas in March.AP
Over the past year,,the vehicle that won a $US3 billion ($.1 billion) NASA contract this year to rendezvous with the Orion and transport NASA’s astronauts to the lunar surface.
Musk has said the company could attempt a launch in early 2022. Unlike the SLS,which would ditch its massive booster stage into the ocean after launch,Starship is designed to be fully reusable. After putting the Starship spacecraft into orbit,the Super Heavy booster would fly back to its launchpad where it would be caught by a pair of arms extended like chopsticks.
Earlier this year,the company attempted suborbital hops,where the spacecraft launched to an altitude of about 9 kilometres,belly flopped back to Earth horizontally,then righted itself and refired its engines before touching down.
But in May,the company pulled off a successful landing,fuelling Musk’s hope that the rocket could be used to transport people and cargo across the solar system.
SpaceX's Starship explodes as it lands.Supplied
“The overarching goal of Starship is to be able to transport enough tonnage to the moon and Mars,” he said in an interview withThe Washington Post earlier this year. “And to have a self-sustaining base on the moon and ultimately a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
Ahead of an astronaut landing,NASA is planning to send science missions to the lunar surface. Those missions would also be carried out by contractors,hired by the space agency to deliver science experiments and technology demonstrations that NASA says would “help the agency study Earth’s nearest neighbour and prepare for human landing missions”.
The first would be by Intuitive Machines,a Houston-based company that is aiming to deliver science experiments in early 2022 and again later in the year. That second mission,to the south pole of the moon,would have a drill that would probe the lunar regolith for ice. Astrobotic,based in Pittsburgh,is also planning to deliver payloads to the lunar surface under the NASA contract.
One of Rocket Lab’s rockets.Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab is also scheduled to launch a small satellite to the moon to serve as a precursor for human missions by testing the orbit for the space station,known as Gateway,that NASA hopes to send to the moon. Rocket Lab,which launches from its site in New Zealand,hopes to have its first launch from the United States in 2022 from the pad it uses at NASA’s facility on Wallops Island,on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
It also plans to attempt to recover a booster next year. But unlike SpaceX,which flies the first stages of its rockets back to landing sites on the ground or ships at sea,Rocket Lab intends to catch its relatively small booster under a parachute with a helicopter.
2022 should also see the debut of a number of new rockets,including the United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket,which would be used by the Pentagon to launch national security satellites. Relativity Space,which uses a 3D printer to manufacture its rockets,plans to first launch of its Terran 1 vehicle from Cape Canaveral in the coming months as well.
Boeing also is looking to get back on track. 2021 was supposed to be the year it finally completed a test flight of its Starliner spacecraft,which is being designed to ferry NASA’s astronauts to and from the International Space Station. But once again it ran into trouble. At the end of 2019,the spacecraft suffered software problems,forcing the aviation behemoth to cut the test flight short. The spacecraft finally returned to the launchpad mid-year,but never got off the ground.
In this long exposure photo,the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Boeing Starliner crew capsule lifts off on an orbital flight test to the International Space Station at Cape Canaveral Air Force station in Florida.AP
This time,the company said the issue was hardware:13 valves in the service module got stuck,forcing it to bring the spacecraft back into its manufacturing facility. It recently announced it would have to swap out the service module. It’s now looking to attempt to launch again sometime in May. If that goes well,a launch with astronauts on board would follow.
The space station could see another new vehicle visit in 2022:Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser,a spaceplane that looks like a miniature version of the space shuttle. The company has been developing the winged vehicle for years with the hopes of one day flying astronauts. But for now,it has a contract from NASA to use it to deliver cargo and supplies to the space station. And it recently announced it received a $US1.4 billion investment that it said would help accelerate the program.
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft,which delivered two crews of astronauts to the space station in 2021,is slated to continue flying crews there in 2022. It also would fly at least one mission,chartered by Axiom Space,in which private astronauts who are paying $US55 million apiece would spend a little more than a week on the station.
,plans to fly six or more suborbital flights in 2022. (Bezos ownsThe Washington Post.) And and start offering commercial service on its suborbital spaceplane for paying space tourists.
From left:Oliver Daemen,Jeff Bezos,Wally Funk and Bezos’ brother Mark in front of the New Shepard rocket in Texas,flew to the edge of space.AP
While those flights go just past the edge of space to a few dozen miles high,NASA’s scientists and engineers will be focused on a far more distant destination,a million miles from Earth. There,the James Webb Space Telescope would begin to unfurl itself in delicate manoeuvres after it was launched on Christmas Day on an Arianespace Ariane 5 rocket. NASA says there are 344 potential “single-point failures” and if anything goes wrong there is no way to send a repair crew.
But if it works,the telescope would be able to capture light from more than 13 billion years ago as the beginning of the formation of the universe.
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson carries crew member Sirisha Bandla on his shoulders while celebrating their flight to space in July.AP
The telescope has been called an Apollo moment for science and could start answering some of astronomy’s biggest questions about how the universe began.
“The whole point of this is to see the unseen universe,” John Grunsfeld,former head of science at NASA,recently toldThe Post. “James Webb will be able to see phenomena that Hubble can’t see,that ground-based telescopes can’t see. What are we going to discover that we had no idea was there?”
The Washington Post