Six space missions to look forward to in 2024

• It’s going to be a bumper time for space missions in 2024 – especially to the Moon, our nearest neighbour.
• Rather than peering through telescopes to look at the stars, I prefer to see them in a vial in my lab.
• So it was a great delight to see the safe return of Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission from asteroid (101955) Bennu in September 2023.

CLPS missions

• Nasa’s series of Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) missions, many of which will launch in 2024, are set to bring a variety of instruments to the Moon.
• The CLPS programme is part of Nasa’s Artemis initiative to continue human exploration of the Moon.
• CLPS-2 is timetabled to launch in early January 2024, and there are four other CLPS missions planned for launch throughout the year.

Trailblazer

Continuing the lunar theme, Nasa’s Trailblazer mission travels to the Moon to understand where any water is situated. Is it locked inside rock as part of the mineral structure, or is it deposited as ice on the rocky surface? Trailblazer is currently scheduled for launch in the first quarter of 2024. However, no precise date has been confirmed. It’s a small mission, part of the Artemis human lunar exploration programme.

Chang'e 6

• This is particularly significant because the spacecraft will collect material from the lunar farside – the South Pole Aitkin Basin.
• This is a region where it is believed there is abundant frozen water.

Hera

In September 2022, Nasa’s Dart mission encountered a system consisting of two asteroids called Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed into Dimorphos (the junior partner). The impact had a purpose: to see if such a collision could divert the asteroid in its path – a necessary goal if ever Earth were to be the target of a direct hit by an incoming asteroid.

• But what we don’t know (and won’t until Hera arrives in 2026) is how effective the impact was.
• Hera will investigate in detail – and its results will help to define Earth’s planetary defence protocol.

Europa Clipper

• Launching almost at the same time as Hera is a Nasa flagship mission: the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa.
• Excitingly, Europa may host life in the form of a substantial fauna analogous to the animals that live on the deep ocean floor around hydrothermal vents.

• Europa Clipper will fly past Europa between 40 and 50 times, taking detailed images of the surface, monitoring the satellite for icy plumes – and, most importantly, looking to see whether this moon has the conditions suitable to support life.
• The investigation will be complemented by observations from Esa’s Juice mission, which is currently on its way to Jupiter.

MMX

• I will finish it with my anticipation of further delights to come.
• The launch of the Japanese Space Agency’s Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) mission to Phobos is currently scheduled for September 2024, and designed to return material to Earth in 2029.

Monica Grady works for The Open University. She receives funding from The UKRI-Science and Technology Facilities Council. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Natural History Museum, London and Chancellor of Liverpool Hope University. She tweets (X's?) as @MonicaGrady