Star Bound №7: 2022 Prepares for Deployment
What’s Up Next in the New Frontier
2021 was a terrific year for space news. Space tourism took off — literally — and William Shatner will never be the same. A giant space telescope finally left earth. Its plucky predecessor glitched and sulked, but eventually came back to life. We landed a rover on Mars and launched a helicopter called Ingenuity in the skeletally thin atmosphere of the Red Planet to keep it company.
But is that all there is? Did we spend all of our engineering energy on a fireworks show of achievements in the foggy night sky that was 2021?
Fortunately, no. 2022 will feature a whole bunch of cool new space stuff to get excited about, as discussed below. But first, a couple of notes. Even aside from these big-ticket items, plenty of less spectacular but still important things will continue to happen. For better or worse, SpaceX will launch more Starlink internet-communication satellites. China’s robotic rovers will explore Mars and the far side of the moon, and its taikonauts will add to the Chinese Space Agency’s partially-assembled space station. The Voyager probes will continue on their lonely way into the cosmos, bearing their groovy playlists for the perusal of whatever alien civilization should happen to be interested. Astronomers will find new exoplanets, and some at least — the exoplanets, not the astronomers — will show spectroscopic signs of life-conducive atmospheres. And a second note, just to keep things real: Bear in mind that launch dates are notoriously slippery creatures; all of the schedules below are subject to (repeated) change.
Nevertheless, here are some highlights.
January: The James Webb Space Telescope has been hurtling through space ever since its launch from South America in late December. Like a superhero changing into his (or her) costume as she runs, JWST has been unfolding and deploying its mirrors and solar panels as it hurries to its destination at Lagrange Point L2. At L2, almost a million miles from Earth, the gravitational forces acting on the satellite from Earth and the sun will be roughly equal, which will help Webb maintain its stable “angel” orbit. The telescope will reach its observing position in just a few days, on January 24. While Webb “sees” in the infrared spectrum, rather than visible light, we should start seeing images captured by the telescope sometime this summer.
March: March 12 is the loosely-scheduled launch date for NASA’s inaugural Artemis project flight. Artemis is the name for America’s effort to return human beings to the Moon. Launch day will bring lots of white knuckles, as it will be the first test — uncrewed, as one might expect — of the nation’s new Space Launch System (read: GIANT ROCKET) and Orion space capsule, along with the European Space Agency’s European Service Module. The goal of this first mission is to get the Orion capsule to the moon and back down to Earth, where it will re-enter the atmosphere and parachute into the sea, just like the glory days of the Apollo missions some, ahem, fifty years ago. If all goes according to plan, a crewed mission to the moon will follow in 2023, with an actual lunar landing slated for 2024. Artemis is important for a number of reasons. One of them is symbolic: NASA has made a big deal out of wanting to use Artemis to put the first woman, and the first person of color, on the moon. But there are scientific reasons as well, including using the moon as a proving ground for technologies we’re going to need when we visit Mars. And, finally, there’s an existential purpose here. If NASA isn’t going big, some of us wonder if it’s going at all. It’s time for the U.S. to get back into the manned exploration business.
Also in March, and related to the Artemis launch, we could see the launch of NASA’s CAPSTONE Mission. Capstone is a 55-pound satellite that will test the viability of a new elliptical orbit calculated to balance the competing gravitational pulls of Earth and Luna in such a way that very little additional energy is needed to maintain it. NASA says it needs to know that its planned “Gateway” space station, a sort of cosmic way station that will orbit the moon, will be able to function in such an orbit. The experimental lunar satellite is being launched for the U.S. by Rocket Lab, which was founded and still operates a launch facility in New Zealand.
And finally, sometime this spring, rocket company Axiom plans to send former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and three tourists (an American, a Canadian, and an Israeli, all male) to the International Space Station for a ten-day stay. The four will fly aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, and while Lopez-Alegria is an Axiom vice-president, the three tourists reportedly paid something like $55 million apiece for their tickets. Axiom, a relative newcomer to what is still an infant industry, has announced plans to build a private space station in the next few years.
April: The SpaceX-4 Mission is scheduled to send four more astronauts — Kjell Lindgren, Robert Hines, and Jessica Watkins of NASA, and the European Space Agency’s Samantha Cristoforetti — to the ISS for a six-month tour of duty, replacing the previous four-person crew who journeyed to the ISS via SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule late last year. If all goes according to plan, Watkins will become the first African-American woman to become a full crew member aboard the space station.
May: As I pointed out in my recap of the year in space for 2021, Boeing’s failure to get its Starliner spacecraft checked out in low-earth orbit was a major disappointment. A scheduled and much-ballyhooed test launch in August of last year had to be called off due to problems with the valves in Starliner’s service module. Several years ago, NASA selected Boeing and SpaceX to develop spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to and from the ISS. SpaceX has succeeded in the task and, as pointed out above, will be shuttling another crew to the station in April of 2022. Boeing is still trying to get Starliner to operational status. Its next scheduled effort will take place in May. We’ll be crossing all ten fingers, and a couple of toes, for this one.
June: Given the enormous number of derelict satellite and other spacecraft parts orbiting Earth these days, we’re almost certain to see a space junk collision in the near future, even if the Russians don’t randomly blow up another old orbiter like they did last year. I don’t know any better than anyone else when such a collision will occur, but I’m choosing June at random. Let’s hope I’m completely wrong, as I frequently am. And if I’m not, let’s hope no one is hurt.
August: We know a fair amount about asteroids made of rock, because most of them are. But NASA’s Psyche Mission, an uncrewed probe to the 140-mile-wide asteroid Psyche 16, will be our first real attempt to study an asteroid composed of metal. Psyche resides in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It appears to be made of iron, much like Earth’s mantle, and scientists hope that study of Psyche will yield insights into the formation of our pale blue dot. The mission will launch on a SpaceX Falcon rocket. It will travel the 270 million miles to the asteroid belt using solar-electric technology, a relatively slow means of propulsion, and should reach Psyche 16 in 2026.
September: NASA’s Double-Asteroid Redirection Test (“DART”) mission is scheduled to arrive — smash into? — a “moonlet” of the asteroid Didymos on September 26. The idea is to see if the impact can nudge the moonlet into a slightly altered orbit. If it does, we’ll have at least a rough confirmation that we know how to protect Earth from an asteroid headed our way — Don’t Look Up-like political distractions notwithstanding.
So here you have it — a brief sample of an immense and rapidly expanding area of human exploration and ambition. To keep up with all the achievements and disappointments to come, climb aboard one of the great news and conversation sources below. Don’t worry if you’re late to the party: There’s still plenty of space.
