Dear friends, the year 2024 is coming to an end. The Universe Space Tech editorial board looks back at its major space events: from Starship successes and Starliner problems to the launch of new interplanetary missions and the completion of old ones.
The last flight of Ingenuity
The Ingenuity drone was unloaded onto the Martian surface by the Perseverance rover in April 2021. It was a demonstrator. Its main task was to test the possibility of studying the Red Planet using heavier-than-air spacecrafts.
The Martian helicopter performed brilliantly. Formally, it was designed for five flights and 30 days of work. In reality, Ingenuity spent almost three years on Mars and flew about 17 km.
Unfortunately, the 72nd flight, which took place on January 18, 2024, was the last for the device. It ended with an emergency landing, during which the drone damaged its blades and lost the ability to continue flying. For some time, NASA kept in touch with Ingenuity and then said goodbye to it, putting the drone in the mode of an autonomous research station. Ingenuity is expected to wake up every day, measure temperature, and take pictures. All of this data will be stored in its onboard memory. NASA hopes that in the future another mission (or even a manned expedition) will land in the area, find Ingenuity, and retrieve the Martian weather information collected by the drone.
Starship’s progress
Like 2023, 2024 was in many ways a Starship year. SpaceX conducted four new tests of the most powerful rocket and space system in history. During them, engineers managed to pass several important milestones. Here are the main ones:
- Successful separation of the Super Heavy booster and its subsequent capture by the Mechazilla turret.
- Successful restart of a Raptor engine in outer space.
- Successful re-entry into the atmosphere followed by the Starship prototype landing.
The seventh Starship flight should take place at the very beginning of 2025. It will involve an updated version of the ship with more capacious fuel tanks.
With it, SpaceX engineers intend to work out the following key steps necessary to begin regular operation of the system: entry into orbit, orbital refueling, as well as catching with Mechazilla not only the gas pedal but also the ship itself. The success of these operations will determine the timing of the return of humans to the Moon, as well as Elon Musk’s highly ambitious plans to send Starship to Mars before the end of this decade.
The Starliner fiasco
While 2024 was marked by many successes for SpaceX, the same cannot be said for Boeing. The company has faced many problems in recent years. Probably, the most serious of them was the situation with the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft.
Initially, the debut unmanned flight of the Starliner was scheduled back in 2017. In reality, it took place only in 2019 and was accompanied by several problems, because of which Boeing had to repeat the test (and it did not succeed at the first attempt). As a result, Starliner went into space with people only in June 2024.
But instead of the long-awaited triumph, Boeing had a high-profile fiasco. Due to problems with the ship’s propulsion system, NASA did not risk using the Starliner to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams to Earth. They stayed on the ISS, and their eight-day space mission stretched to eight months. As for the Starliner, although the ship then successfully returned to Earth, its future is now shrouded in fog. Boeing has already incurred significant losses on it. There are persistent rumors that the company wants to get rid of the ship by shutting down the project or finding a buyer for it.
The adventures of the Peregrine and SLIM spacecrafts on the Moon
In early 2024, we witnessed the launch of two private missions to the Moon at once. The first was the Peregrine probe, built by Astrobotic. Unfortunately, shortly after separation from the rocket, it developed a fuel leak that made it impossible to perform the maneuvers necessary to reach the Moon. Because of this, the vehicle had to be sent into the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Odysseus probe built by Intuitive Machines was more successful. On the night of February 22-23, it became the first private vehicle in history to land on the Moon. However, it was not without several technical problems. During the landing, Odysseus broke one of its legs and was in a tilted position, which made it difficult to communicate with the MCC. Nevertheless, the probe managed to complete most of its science program and send the collected data back to Earth in time.
Odysseus was not the only vehicle to land on the Moon with “adventures”. Back in September 2023, JAXA launched the SLIM probe, designed to demonstrate high-precision landing technology. Due to the peculiarities of the trajectory of the apparatus, caused by the desire of designers to save fuel, its journey to the Moon took almost five months. SLIM began its moon landing on January 19, 2024.
As in the case of Odysseus, problems began on the final section of the descent. One of its engines failed. This resulted in SLIM landing in an abnormal mode, jamming its “head” into the regolith. As a result, during most of the local day, the solar panels of the spacecraft were in the shade, which significantly limited its ability to collect data and maintain communications.
Nevertheless, SLIM accomplished its primary mission by demonstrating that it could accurately land on the Moon. It also transmitted several images back to Earth and, most surprisingly, managed to survive several cold lunar nights. And it was not equipped with any heaters! The Japanese probe contacted Earth for the last time on April 29, 2024, after which it fell asleep forever.
The first soil sample from the back side of the Moon
In 2024, China once again made history in lunar exploration by being the first to do what no space power or private company had ever managed to do before. Tianxia managed to collect and deliver to Earth a soil sample from the Moon’s backside.
This task was accomplished by the Chang’e-6 mission, which was launched on May 3. A month later, its descent platform made a successful landing on the outskirts of the 500-kilometer-long Apollo Crater. In addition to taking a soil sample, it also landed a small rover.
The capsule with the collected material returned to Earth on June 25. Its study has already yielded several curious discoveries: it appears that volcanic activity on our planet’s satellite lasted much longer than previously thought. The success of “Chang’e-6” has once again demonstrated China’s growing space ambitions and has become an important incentive on the way to its main goal: to land humans on the Moon before the end of this decade.
The first private spacewalk
On September 10, 2024, Polaris Dawn, a private space mission funded by billionaire Jared Isaacman, was launched. It was marked by two striking achievements at once. The first was breaking the record of orbit apogee for a manned spacecraft, which was set back in 1966 by the Gemini 11 mission. During one of the rotations, Crew Dragon moved away from the Earth at 1400 km, passing through the inner part of the radiation belt.
The next historic achievement was the first private spacewalk. It involved Jared Isaacman himself and astronaut Sarah Gillis. Despite some technical glitches, the operation was a success, marking an important step for private spacewalking.
Isaacman himself has since made another meteoric rise, only this time in the political sphere. He has been nominated to be the new NASA administrator and is likely to get the post.
New space missions
In 2024, we witnessed the long-awaited launch of several very ambitious space missions. One of them was the NASA-built Europa Clipper. Its target is Europa – an icy satellite of Jupiter, under the surface of which hides a huge ocean. The journey to the target will take Europa Clipper six years, during which the device will perform gravity maneuvers near Mars and Earth.
The European Space Agency has not stood aside from space exploration either. In October, it launched the Hera mission. Its target is the twin asteroid Didymos. In 2022, the NASA-built DART probe rammed into its satellite Dimorphos. The impact altered the body’s orbital characteristics and caused it to acquire a long comet-like tail that lasted for several months. Hera will have to study in detail exactly how the impact affected the asteroid and whether it led to the formation of a crater. The spacecraft will reach Dimorphos in late 2026.
Already in December, ESA launched another long-awaited mission called Proba-3. Within its framework, a pair of satellites will create artificial solar eclipses in order to observe the solar corona. To do this, they will keep a constant distance of 150 meters between them. At the moment, the Proba-3 satellites are in the deployment phase, they should start observing the corona next year.
The demise of the NEOWISE telescope
In the past year, we witnessed not only the launch of new missions but also the completion of the work of an honored space veteran. We are talking about the NEOWISE telescope, which was launched in 2009. Initially, it was engaged in creating an infrared view of the entire sky, but after the exhaustion of refrigerant reserves, it switched to studying near-Earth objects.
NEOWISE could have continued to operate for a long time, but it was doomed by an increase in solar activity, which greatly accelerated its deorbit. The telescope had no engines and could not compensate for the gradual loss of altitude. As a result, NASA had to end its mission. In early August, the telescope transmitted to Earth the results of the last observations, after which it was turned off. And on November 2, NEOWISE entered the atmosphere and burned up in the sky over the Indian Ocean.
The latest Parker Solar Probe record
The year 2024 ended with the accompaniment of a new record set by the Parker solar probe. He approached the Sun at a record distance of 6.2 million km on December 24.
Such an achievement was possible due to the maneuver performed by the spacecraft in November. It allowed to reduce the perihelion of the probe’s orbit to a record value. In fact, Parker is now flying through the upper layers of the solar corona. At this point, its heat shield is heating up to a temperature of 1500 °C.
This is the last record of the spacecraft. Parker will not change its orbit again. The flight plan assumes two more turns around the Sun. But since all systems of the probe are working in normal mode, most likely, its mission will be extended by NASA and we will hear about Parker more than once.
