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Robotic missions to Mars and advances in space tourism have dominated the space events of 2021. But in 2022, the moon is likely to come to the fore as companies and governments launch various moon-bound spacecraft.

Many of these missions revolve around Artemis, NASA’s multi-billion-dollar effort to run routine science missions on its surface ten years later to return astronauts to the moon and prepare for further treks to Mars (a much more ambitious effort that probably won’t happen in this one). ten years). But before the astronauts can see the moonlight, a series of rocket tests and unmanned science missions will need to be completed.

2022 is the year of the first steps towards the moon. The two new rockets, central to NASA’s lunar plans, will be launched into space for the first time, each with more power than the Saturn 5 rocket from the Apollo program. Other countries are expected to join the moonwalk.

NASA’s Massive Lunar Rocket Debut

After years of development delays, NASA’s Space Launch System, or SLS, could make its first space travel – without any humans – as early as March 2022.

The mission, called Artemis 1, will mark the first in a series of flights under NASA’s Artemis program by SLS, NASA’s most important rocket system to launch Moon-bound astronauts from Earth. For Artemis 1, SLS will launch a capsule called Orion from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to send it around and behind the moon, and then rehearse an orbit to be performed by Artemis 2, the next mission scheduled to transport astronauts in 2024. The third mission, Artemis 3, will result in the moon landing.

Like any major space mission, Artemis 1 has been delayed several times. It was originally planned for 2020, then delayed various times throughout 2021 due to development difficulties and setbacks caused by the pandemic. NASA attributes the delay, most recently until March 2022, to the need to investigate and replace a faulty onboard computer that controls one of the rocket’s four main engines.

SpaceX’s Next Starship Test

At the center of NASA’s efforts to return humans to the moon is SpaceX’s Starship, which will be used as a human lunar lander around 2025. This will be the agency’s first astronaut mission to the lunar surface since 1972. Designed as a fully reusable rocket system, Starship is also at the center of Elon Musk’s ultimate goal of getting humans to Mars and will be crucial to SpaceX’s revenue-generating satellite launch business.

But first, Starship must reach orbit. This test flight, with no one on board, could take place sometime in mid-2022.

Mr Musk, CEO of SpaceX, had hoped to launch Starship into orbit in 2021. However, a long-running Federal Aviation Administration review of the environmental impact of SpaceX’s launch site in Texas and development delays with the company’s new Raptor engines delayed the test flight. The FAA review is expected to be completed in late February and will determine whether deeper environmental studies will be necessary or whether SpaceX can resume Starship launches.

A successful orbital test will be an important step in NASA’s lunar program. Launched atop the Space Launch System inside the Orion capsule, astronauts will rendezvous with and transfer to the Starship on the Moon to land the rest of the way to the Moon’s surface. The starship would then lift off from the moon, then send the astronauts back to Orion for the journey home to Earth.

Moon Robots Funded by NASA

As part of a NASA program, three robotic lunar landers are scheduled to land on the lunar surface in 2022 if development goes as planned.

Houston-based company Intuitive Machines and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic aim to send small lunar landers carrying various scientific payloads to the moon by the end of 2022. The landers were developed as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. It’s the result of the agency’s effort to rely on private companies to send cargo and research vehicles into space in hopes of stimulating a commercial market.

The Nova-C lander, a six-legged cylindrical robot from Intuitive Machines, is expected to launch in early 2022 on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which is carrying a dozen payloads to the lunar surface. One of the onboard instruments will measure plumes of lunar dirt produced during Nova-C’s descent, an experiment that could help engineers prevent messy moon landings in the future. The lander will also use a small rover built by a British company, Spacebit. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the company may also send a second mission to the lunar surface.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine terrain vehicle is a boxed four-legged terrain vehicle with an onboard propulsion system that will ease itself on a basaltic plain on the sunny side of the moon’s northeast quadrant carrying 14 research payloads. The company says Peregrine will be ready to launch with United Launch Alliance’s new Vulcan rocket in mid-2022.

But whether it will be launched on time depends on when the rocket will be ready to fly. Vulcan’s debut was delayed by the rocket’s engine supplier, which is Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin. The new BE-4 engines have not yet been delivered.

Rocket Lab, which manufactures rockets for small launches, is set to send a microwave-sized satellite called CAPSTONE, or CubeSat, to NASA from the company’s launch site in New Zealand in March 2022.

The satellite will study an orbit around the moon where a future space station called Gateway, developed by NASA and other space agencies, will be located within the next decade.

CAPSTONE will also test new navigation technology designed to calculate a spacecraft’s position relative to other spacecraft. Traditionally, satellites use onboard cameras to determine where they are relative to star formation or the apparent position of the sun. Instead, CAPSTONE will attempt to determine its position in space by communicating with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, an imaging satellite launched in 2009.

South Korea’s First Moonshot

The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, a box-shaped satellite, will be South Korea’s first arrival on the moon, as the country aims to leverage its technical know-how to conduct missions in space.

The six main vehicle-carrying spacecraft, managed by Seoul’s space agency, Korea Aerospace Research Institute, are scheduled to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in August 2022 and reach lunar orbit by December. He will spend a year researching the moon’s geology and remotely studying the chemical composition of lunar dirt.

The satellite will also carry a Lunar Terrain Imager that will survey potential landing sites for a subsequent South Korean robotic moon landing mission.

Lunar robots from the other three countries will also try to reach the moon in 2022.

The Luna-25 spacecraft, likely to launch in mid-2022, will mark Russia’s first moon landing since 1976, when the Soviet-era Luna-24 spacecraft collected lunar samples to return to Earth. The all-terrain vehicle will study the lunar soil and test technologies for future Russian moon landings.

India plans to send the Chandrayaan-3 lander and rover to the moon in the third quarter of 2022, and is seeking to make its third lunar mission after the landing craft package from India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission crashed in 2019.

ispace, a Japanese space company, plans to send the Mission 1 lander to the moon in one day. second half of 2022. If the landing is successful, it will deploy a pair of rovers. One, a small four-wheeled robot named Rashid, was built by the United Arab Emirates. Another smaller robotic explorer built by Japan’s space agency is the size and shape of a basketball. Once docked, it can transform into a rover by dividing itself in half and examining dirt on the moon, using the halves as wheels.