A lot of us love science fiction. Look at all the books published, the sci-fi series you can find on your TV or the blockbuster movies that hit theaters every year!
In 2022 we can look forward to big-budget movies like Moonfall, continuing series like The Expanse on Amazon Prime. Plus any number of exciting novels to hit bookstore shelves or our iPad libraries. But, amidst all our focus on science fiction, it might be easy to miss a lot the science ‘fact’ that is happening all around us.
January 6
SpaceX launched 49 more Starlink satellites into Earth orbit. What are these things again? As a reminder, Starlink satellites are set to deliver low-cost, high speed internet to even the most remote regions of the world.
Elon Musk is at it again. There are now nearly 2,000 Starlink satellites orbiting the earth, with many more on the way.
January 24
Space nerds rejoice. The James Webb Telescope reached the gravitational balance point between the Earth and the moon (the second Lagrange point). It will now begin probing the universe in ways far beyond the capabilities of the Hubble Telescope that we have all come to know.
February 18
Perseverance, the robotic to land on Mars, will celebrate the first anniversary of its successful living on the red planet!
The rover will continue its ongoing mission that has already included launching the first helicopter ever to fly on the planet. How many of us expect colonization to happen here?
March
NASA’s Capstone mission will send a small satellite into lunar orbit that can be used to provide data for future lunar missions.
Sometime in the spring, NASA will launch Artemis I. That one is yet another big step in the mission to return manned missions to the moon. The Artemis I will be an unmanned flight that looks to test the entry and splashdown of a newly designed crew module onto the moon.
Last but not least is the Axiom-1. This plans to send the first private crew to the International Space Station this year.
The team will be commanded by a former NASA astronaut (and current Axiom VP), along with a crew of space ‘tourists’ including investors and philanthropists from the US, Canada, and Israel. It will mark the first commercial tourist flight to the ISS. So it begins….
April
The SpaceX Crew-4 will deliver another private crew to the ISS, as the commercial mission of the long-running station begins to take shape.
April/May
China may complete its own space station (Tiangong) as new modules will be launched and attached to the growing structure in 2022.
May
Boeing’s Starliner will look toward a second flight attempt as it plans to provide another vehicle that can deliver crews to the ISS.
July
Russia is expected to launch its Luna-25 lunar rover this summer. The rover is expected to study the moon’s South Pole to better understand the composition of the region’s surface, while also studying things like plasma and dust in the lunar exosphere.
August
South Korea is expected to launch its first mission to the moon this summer as well. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter is set to launch in August from the Kennedy Space Center, onboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. This mission would bring South Korea into the mix of countries focusing on space and lunar missions.
NASA is sending the Psyche mission to study the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Specifically, the mission will target an asteroid that is made almost entirety of metal to possibly unlock whether the asteriod is a literal gold mine of valuable minerals and resources or just a big rock.
September
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will complete its extended mission to survey the entire observable ‘sky’ which is scheduled to be completed in September.
Russia and the European Space Agency are targeting this time period to launch their Rosalind Franklin rover mission to Mars, called ExoMars. It would arrive on Mars in 2023 and will look to further our understanding of the red planet.
NASA is executing a true science-fiction style mission, when it wil purposely crash the DART probe into the asteriod, Dimorphos to determine if it can change the course of the rock as it orbits a larger asteroid (Didymos). The probe launched in November and has been on it’s way to this date with destiny ever since.
NASA’s Juno mission has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016 and in September it will execute a flyby of the moon Europa to send back the best images ever captured of the bright moon. This follows years of delivering amazing images of Jupiter.
Other Missions
The SpaceX reusable Starship may finally lift off after a series of failed attempts.
Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket (also a reusable vehicle) may launch.
India’s space program may also become more active, with several unmanned test flights planned for later in 2022.
