The successful conclusion of the Artemis II mission has reignited America's long-standing love affair with outer space. Manned missions to the Moon and Mars are back on the agenda, and that has many people excited about the future.
Unfortunately, NASA's ever-slipping timetable has Artemis III scheduled for late 2027 to test vital systems for a Moon landing, with Artemis IV flying to the Moon and landing in 2028.
Between now and then, NASA and other space-faring countries have scheduled several unmanned missions to the planets that promise new discoveries that could change the way we look at ourselves and the universe.
Chang'e 7
China will deploy its second Moon lander this year, the Chang’e 7. If you are watching the superb alt-history Apple series For All Mankind, it's a case of art imitating history. In the TV series, American astronauts land on the rim of Shackleton Crater, near the lunar south pole, to hunt for water ice that has been detected there. China's Chang’e 7 will also land at Shackleton to look for evidence of water.
Finding water on the Moon is the "Holy Grail" for future space travel. The H2O can be broken down into hydrogen for rocket fuel, oxygen for breathing, and the ice can be melted for potable water. Not having to lug all that from the Earth to the Moon would save billions of dollars and hundreds of pounds of weight.
How much water is on the Moon is an open question. That's why Chang'e 7 will deploy a small craft with tiny rocket thrusters that will descend into the crater and find where the ice is hiding. It will use its molecular analyser to sniff out water there.
Confirming the existence of water on the Moon would be a tremendous coup for China's burgeoning space program.
Nancy Grace Roman Telescope
A third extraordinary tool for looking at the universe will be launched by NASA sometime after September, as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will join the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes as our "eyes on the sky." Named after NASA's first agency astronomer, she is considered "the mother of Hubble," and it was her drive and determination that finally got a telescope into space.
"What sets Roman apart, however, is that it views an area of sky 100-times larger," according to the BBC. This will allow extraordinarily wide-field views of areas of the sky that are many times more detailed than Hubble's.
Roman will also be able to block starlight to directly actually see exoplanets, instead of inferring their existence by measuring the "wobble" in a star's orbit. Roman will also glimpse planet-forming disks to unlock the mysteries of how planets form, "complete a statistical census of planetary systems in our galaxy, and settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics," according to the BBC.
Another exciting addition to our planet-hunting arsenal is the European Space Agency's (ESA) PLATO.
Over the last three decades, astronomers have confirmed the discovery of over 6,000 planets beyond our Solar System. What nobody has yet found among all those ‘exoplanets’, however, is a planet like Earth, because we haven’t had observatories capable of finding them.
The European Space Agency’s PLATO (Planetary Transits and Oscillations of Stars) spacecraft, due to launch towards the end of 2026, will change that. Using 26 cameras working together, PLATO will scan the skies looking for the tiny dips in a star’s brightness created when a planet passes in front.
PLATO will be powerful enough to pick up small, rocky planets in orbit around stars like our Sun. Critically, it will be able to find exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zone – the region around a star where liquid water can pool on the surface.
Martian Moons Exploration
Also, later this year, Japan is sending a probe to study the two tiny moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. If they can pull it off, it should be eye-opening.
The Martian moons are small. Phobos is only 17 miles wide, and that's where the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to land.
Not only land, but scoop up a chunk of Phobos and fly it back to Earth. This sample return mission beats NASA to the punch after the U.S. agency canceled our own sample return mission early this year. NASA had been planning to send a craft to land near the Perseverance Rover, which has been faithfully collecting samples for years. The cancelation of the mission means the U.S. will have to wait for human missions to obtain its own sample of Martian soil.
BepiColumbo Mission to Mercury
The ESA launched the Mercury probe, BepiColumbo in October 2018 and has already flown by the nearest planet to the Sun 5 times. It's a roundabout approach to Mercury that saves on fuel but also gives the ESA the ability to image more of the planet's surface than has ever been seen.
It's a two-for-one mission with two planetary orbiters on an eight-year cruise.
"The goal is to gain a better understanding of not just our Solar System, but the thousands of known exoplanets that orbit close to their stars," reports the BBC. "By studying Sun-hugging Mercury up close, ESA hopes to better understand how such tight orbits might affect these distant worlds and their atmospheres."
There had only been two successful missions to Mercury before BepiColumbo. It's been something of an afterthought for robotic missions of discovery by NASA. The ESA should fill several libraries with all the new information they will get on this trip.
"Why is there ice in the polar craters of the scorched planet? Why does Mercury have a magnetic field? And what are the mysterious 'hollows' on its surface?" are some of the questions the ESA probe will try to answer beginning early next year.
