The year 2023 proved to be an important one for space missions, with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returning a sample from an asteroid and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission exploring the lunar south pole, and 2024 is shaping up to be another exciting year for space exploration.
Several new missions under NASA’s Artemis plan and Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative will target the Moon.
The latter half of the year will feature several exciting launches, with the launch of the Martian Moons eXploration mission in September, Europa Clipper and Hera in October and Artemis II and VIPER to the Moon in November – if everything goes as planned.
I’m a planetary scientist, and here are six of the space missions I’m most excited to follow in 2024.
1. Europa Clipper
Illustration of what the Europa Clipper spacecraft will look like flying by Europa, a moon of Jupiter.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA will launch Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. Europa is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a surface made of ice. Beneath its icy shell, Europa likely harbors a saltwater ocean, which scientists expect contains over twice as much water as all the oceans here on Earth combined.
With Europa Clipper, scientists want to investigate whether Europa’s ocean could be a suitable habitat for extraterrestrial life.
The mission plans to do this by flying past Europa nearly 50 times to study the moon’s icy shell, its surface’s geology and its subsurface ocean. The mission will also look for active geysers spewing out from Europa.
This mission will change the game for scientists hoping to understand ocean worlds like Europa.
The launch window – the period when the mission could launch and achieve its planned route – opens Oct. 10, 2024, and lasts 21 days. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and arrive at the Jupiter system in 2030.
2. Artemis II launch
The Artemis II astronauts at the launchpad during a ground systems test in September 2023 at Kennedy Space Center.
NASA
The Artemis program, named after Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology, is NASA’s plan to go back to the Moon. It will send humans to the Moon for the first time since 1972, including the first woman and the first person of color. Artemis also includes plans for a longer-term, sustained presence in space that will prepare NASA for eventually sending people even farther – to Mars.
Artemis II is the first crewed step in this plan, with four astronauts planned to be on board during the 10-day mission.
The mission builds upon Artemis I, which sent an uncrewed capsule into orbit around the Moon in late 2022.
Artemis II will put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon before returning them home. It is currently planned for launch as early as November 2024. But there is a chance it will get pushed back to 2025, depending on…
