New missiles
NASA first launched its giant Space Launch System in 2022, lighting up the Florida night with an incredible torrent of flames as it carried the Artemis I mission to the moon. That shifted attention to SpaceX, which is building a next-generation rocket, Starship, which is also at the center of NASA’s manned Artemis III lunar landing attempt.
SpaceX has approved a major environmental assessment that would allow it to launch an uncrewed orbital test flight from South Texas if it met certain conditions. But the rocket wasn’t ready for flight in 2022. The company hasn’t announced a test date this year, but regular ground tests of Starship equipment indicate it’s working on it.
Numerous other rockets may fly for the first time in 2023. The main one, United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur, will eventually replace that company’s Atlas V, a vehicle that has been central to American spaceflight for two decades. The Vulcan relies on the BE-4 engine built by Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos. The same engine, in turn, will be used in Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, which may test fly by the end of this year.
A number of US private companies are expected to start testing new missiles in 2023, including Relativity and ABL. They could be joined by foreign missile manufacturers, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which could test Japan’s H3 missile in February, and Arianespace, which is working on a flight test of Europe’s Ariane 6 missile.
New moon landings
We are guaranteed at least one lunar landing attempt in 2023. A Japanese company, Ispace, launched its M1 mission on a SpaceX rocket in December. It’s taking a slow, fuel-efficient route to the moon and is expected to arrive in April, when it will attempt to deploy a rover built by the United Arab Emirates, a robot built by Japan’s JAXA space agency, as well as other payloads. .
There could be as many as five lunar landing attempts this year.
NASA has hired a few private companies to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. Both, Houston-based Intuitive Machines and Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, faced delays in 2022 but could make the journey in the coming months.
They could be joined by the lunar missions of three government space programs. India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was delayed last year but could be ready in 2023. A Japanese mission, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, aims to test the country’s lunar landing technologies. Finally, Russia’s Luna-25 mission was delayed from last September, but Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, may try it this year.
New space telescopes
The Webb telescope amazed space enthusiasts and scientists with its view of the cosmos, but we can gain new insights from a variety of orbital observatories.
Perhaps the most important is Xuntian, a Chinese mission departing later this year that will be a more advanced version of the Hubble Space Telescope. The spacecraft will survey the universe at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths in orbit around Earth, close to the country’s Tiangong space station.
A Japanese-led mission, XRISM, pronounced chrism, could also launch earlier in the year. The mission will use X-ray spectroscopy to study plasma clouds, which could help explain the composition of the universe. A European space telescope, Euclid, may also launch on a SpaceX rocket after the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused the spacecraft to lose its place on a Russian Soyuz rocket. It will study the dark energy and dark matter of the universe.
New planetary missions
A new spacecraft is headed for Jupiter this year, aiming to become the first ever to orbit another planet’s moon. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer, or JUICE, will launch as early as April 5 from an Ariane 5 rocket to depart for the Jovian system, arriving in 2031. Once it reaches the gas giant, it will perform 35 flybys. of three of the giant world’s moons: Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede, all of which are believed to have subsurface oceans. In 2034, JUICE will orbit Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system.
Getting closer to the sun is Rocket Lab, a small launch company founded in New Zealand. It wants to use its electron rocket to send a mission to Venus. The company’s Photon satellite will attempt to deploy a small probe, built with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that will briefly study the planet’s toxic atmosphere. The mission was scheduled for May, but is expected to be delayed as the company prioritizes missions for its other clients.
A total solar eclipse and a not-so-total one
In 2023 there will be two solar eclipses.
A total solar eclipse on April 20 will be more of a Southern Hemisphere event and the moon will only eclipse the sun in remote parts of Australia and Indonesia. (Perhaps not a bad time to be on a boat in parts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, too.)
But Americans might get a good show on Oct. 14, when North America is visited by an annular solar eclipse. Eclipses of this type are sometimes referred to as “ring of fire” eclipses because the Moon is too far from Earth to completely block the Sun, but creates a ring-like effect when it reaches totality. The eclipse’s path passes through parts of Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before dipping into Central and South America. If the weather cooperates, it should be a great solar show and a nice build-up to the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse that will cross the United States from southwest to northeast.