Because competition in space is intensifying

A variety of space missions will take place in 2022, a year that is expected to be “big” for space science and technology. The Moon will be in the spotlight with a plethora of missions, but beyond that there will be many new ventures.

However, according to many analysts, in addition to the scientific curiosity and irresistible attraction of space to humans, the growing involvement with space partly obscures the admitted or unacknowledged military and business goals of more and more states, which feel insecure with similar disparities. initiatives of their competitors and realize that they are in danger of being left behind. In other words, this year space – for better or worse – will become even more a space for commercial activities and military applications.

In particular, China does not hide that it wants to “gnaw” on US space sovereignty, while Putin’s Russia longs for the Soviet Union’s space glory. Europe is slowly but steadily increasing its space “footprint”, as is Japan, which has the terrestrial stress of neighboring China and North Korea. The UAE wants to establish itself as the first space country in the Arab world, Israel wants to go into space for prestige reasons and not only that, South Korea wants the same (with an eye on nuclear North Korea), while India is stepping up its space ambitions, largely due to geostrategic competition with China and Pakistan.

And of course, above all, the US wants to keep its “upper hand” in space and for national security reasons, which is why it recently created the Space Force as the newest corps of its armed forces. Until recently, US Space Force commanders estimated that their “territory” ended 36,000 kilometers above Earth, at the height of geostationary satellites. But after an agreement with NASA, the US return to the Moon this year has led to an increase of at least 1,000 times the space that the US Pentagon believes it should monitor. As the British magazine “Economist” wrote, “even if it ever existed, the age of innocence is now a thing of the past” in space.

The following is a summary of the main space projects expected in the new year.

The return to the Moon

After the American Apollo manned missions and the Soviet Luna in the 1960s and 1970s of the “cold” war between the two then superpowers, the moon of the Earth had fallen into relative obscurity. But something that will change dramatically in the coming years, starting in 2022, when many countries (USA, Russia, India, Japan, South Korea) but also private companies are planning missions in it, starting a new era of lunar exploration with the aim of the stay on the Earth satellite to become permanent and not temporary. NASA alone supports at least 18 government and private lunar missions this year.

The largest will be NASA’s Artemis 1 unmanned mission, the first step in the return of US astronauts – including the first woman to walk on the moon – in a few years, if and the original 2024 target is probably no longer achievable. “Artemis 1”, which will take place this spring, will be a test for both the Orion space capsule that will be placed – in this first phase without astronauts – in orbit around the moon for a few days before returning on Earth with a dip in the Pacific Ocean, as well as for the colossal rocket SLS (Space Launch System) that will carry Orion and which is about 15% more powerful than “Saturn 5” of the “Apollo” missions. The launch of the SLS rocket in February will be the first large unmanned mission this year, which will carry 13 small satellites (cubesats) close to the Moon. The sequel will be Artemis II in 2024, when SLS will carry Orion along with four astronauts around the moon, before finally in 2025, Artemis III will attempt a moon landing with a four-member crew that will remain on the moon for four days. It will be the first step in creating the permanent “Artemis” base where up to four astronauts can stay for one to two months. However, it is not unlikely that NASA’s manned flights to the Moon will eventually be taken over by Elon Musk’s Space X Starship rocket under construction, which will be more powerful and cheaper than the SLS.

At the same time this year, robotic landing vehicles from both the US and other countries will land on the Moon and take walks on the Moon, mainly at its southern pole, where there is plenty of ice water in sunless craters. Russia, which as the USSR has eight successful lunar missions, most recently Luna 24 in 1976, will catch up again with the Luna 25 mission in July. The spacecraft will collect a sample of lunar soil (shale) and bring it to Earth.

In the second half of 2022, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will make a second attempt to land on the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, after the failure of the previous one in 2019, which crashed on the Moon due to a software error. The Indian rover Vikram, which will be transported to the moon, is planned this time to explore the polar lunar environment.

Vikram will probably be accompanied by the Peregrine spacecraft of the private American company Astrobotic, which is funded by NASA. Peregrine, which has not been tested in space so far, is designed as a platform for transporting all kinds of cargo. In its first lunar mission, in addition to 14 NASA instruments, it will carry not one but six rovers from various organizations. NASA plans to use Peregrine to transport the big VIPER rover to the Moon in 2023, which will be looking for water. Also, the American robotics company Lunar Outpost, after an agreement with NASA, will send at the end of 2022 a rover that will transport 4G communication equipment for the “Artemis” missions and at the same time will collect lunar dust.

The Japanese Space Exploration Agency (JAXA) will send a rover near the equator of the Moon, while the United Arab Emirates plans to send the Hakuto-R akato (manufactured by the Japanese company) to the moon in the fall – the first Arab country ispace) and the Rashid rover (manufactured by the UAE in Dubai). The Arabian rover will have the Langmuir scientific instrument, which will be able to measure for the first time the plasma of charged particles that the solar “wind” sends to the lunar surface. South Korea will make its space “premiere” in August, in collaboration with NASA, with the mission of the Korean lunar satellite Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which will make geological analyzes from above.

Mars

The European rover Rosalind Franklin will be launched in September to reach the “red” planet, where it will arrive in 2023. The ExoMars mission will be a collaboration between ESA and the Russian Space Agency Roscosmos, in search of traces of Martian life. The rover – larger than the Chinese Zhurong but smaller than the American “Perseverance” – will have several cameras and a drill capable of drilling to a depth of up to two meters in the Oxia Planum area, which may once have had life-friendly conditions. both Europe and Russia-USSR have a history of losses during the landing on Mars. NASA’s Perseverance and Curiosity rovers, along with the Ingenuity helicopter, will continue their “rides” on Mars this year.

Jupiter and its moons

The European Space Agency (ESA) JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) is scheduled to launch to Jupiter in May, in seven years, when it will make successive short passes through the icy satellites Europa, Ganymede and Kallisto. others exploring possible oceans beneath their icy surface, where traces of extraterrestrial life could be found.

The asteroids

In August, NASA’s Psyche mission will be launched to the ancient and metal-rich asteroids of the same name (mainly iron), where it will arrive after four years, with the aim of photographing it, analyzing its chemical composition and measuring its internal structure. and its magnetic field. A more dramatic event in October will be NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Test) guided collision on the small moon Dimorpho of the asteroid Gemini, the first planetary defense mission aimed at diverting the path of a potentially threatening asteroid.

Nearby human private space flights

2021 was a turning point for sub-orbital manned spaceflight by private companies, with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin sending “tourists” into space for the first time, something they intend to do routinely in 2022. This year Boeing will do the same with the Starliner, which was hit by severe problems in 2019-2020, making a first unmanned flight in the first half and a second manned in the second half of 2022.

The “Missile” voyage can be made this year by the large Vulcan rocket of the American United Launch Alliance (ULA), which has mainly undertaken the national space security missions (see military and secret services) of the USA. A ULA “Atlas 5” rocket is also the one that will launch the Boeing Starliner to the International Space Station. On the other hand, it remains questionable whether the very large rocket and spacecraft Starship of Space X, designed to transport people and cargo to the Moon and Mars, will be flown over the atmosphere for the first time this year.

Space Stations

The Chinese Space Agency will continue the partial construction of its own Tiangong space station, which began in 2021, adding new departments (science laboratories) to orbit and possibly making it fully operational. In the fall of 2022, the French-Italian company Thales Alenia Space will deliver to the US the outer protective housing of the main part (Habitation and Logistics Outpost-HALO) of Gateway, the lunar space station planned by NASA with international partners (ESA, JAXA, Canada etc.). From the Gateway – which will be partially set up in the coming years and will operate from 2024 as an intermediate station between Earth and the Moon – will begin the lunar “bus” Human Landing System (HLS) that will transport astronauts to the moon, when there a lunar base will have been created. Initially the Gateway will be inhabited for one month a year, then for two months and finally more permanently. The International Space Station (ISS) has been inhabited continuously for 21 years, but is much closer to Earth, only 400 kilometers, and the Gateway will be much further away. The Indian ISRO also has plans for its own space station and, as a first step, will make the first unmanned flight of the Gaganyaan-1 spacecraft this year, which is intended to transport its first astronauts into orbit in 2023.

Source: AMPE