ISRO's Sun Probe To NASA's Moon Landing: Five Space Missions We Eagerly Await In 2020
In terms of milestones, 2019 was host to some of the most spectacular space missions, not just for India, with its Chandrayaan 2, but also other space agencies across the globe, including NASA. And this just excites us for what the year 2020 has in store for us. Here are the five space missions we eagerly await in 2020.
In terms of milestones, 2019 was host to some of the most spectacular space missions, not just for India, with its Chandrayaan 2, but also other space agencies across the globe, including NASA.
And this just excites us for what the year 2020 has in store for us. From what we know, humanity's not losing any momentum in space exploration. Here are the five space missions we eagerly await in 2020.
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NASA Artemis Moon landing
NASA created a revolution 50 years ago when its Apollo mission resulted in men stepping on the moon. However, now NASA has plans to send the first woman on the lunar surface with Artemis I. This mission is also going to witness NASA¡¯s newest and most powerful Space Launch System (SLS) -- if it gets ready in time in 2020. This mission is cursed with delays and chances are it could get pushed to 2021.
ISRO Aditya L1 Mission
ISRO¡¯s Chandrayaan 2 was a phenomenal success, even without the rover landing on the Lunar surface. And now, the next big mission planned by ISRO is Aditya-L1, set for the first half of 2020. That mission will see ISRO launch a satellite towards the Sun in order to study its corona. This is the outer layer of the Sun, extending hundreds of thousands of kilometres.
ISRO
They¡¯ll use a PSLV rocket to shoot it in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 or L1 which is around 1.5 million kilometres away from Earth to enable constant monitoring of the sun without eclipse affecting it.
Four Mars Missions
After exploring the lunar surface, NASA and other space agencies are channelling their focus to the Martian surface. There¡¯s a total of four scheduled missions to Mars, and three of them are rovers. First is by NASA -- the Mars 2020 rover that is equipped with a ton of hardware to capture information about life on Mars including 23 cameras, two microphones and lasers for chemical analysis.
Huoxing-1 is China¡¯s Mars rover that will be shot to the red planet to study the atmosphere and the Martian surface for 90 days.
European Space Agency and Russia¡¯s Roscosmos have created a rover of their own, named after renowned chemist Rosalind Franklin that will also be on an expedition to look for signs of life.
Last on this list is Hope Mars Mission by UAE¡¯s space agency that will be studying Mars¡¯s atmospheric chemistry with the help of an orbiter.
China Moon Dust Retrieval
China has one of the most exciting space missions this year. Chang¡¯e-5 that is slated for a late 2020 launch will send a lander to the lunar surface that will collect 2.04 kilograms of moon rocks and dust from the western edge of the near side of the moon. Once done, an ascent vehicle will take the spacecraft up to the orbiter which will send the package back to Earth. How cool is that?
Starship Interplanetary Rocket Launch
While ISRO and NASA are doing great work in the field of Space, Elon Musk¡¯s Space X isn¡¯t far behind. It recently unveiled to the world its reusable interplanetary spacecraft, called Starship, that is destined to take humans to Mars someday.
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However, before that, it must succeed in high-altitude test flights that are expected to commence in 2020 along with an orbital flight in Q2 of 2020. While the mission truly is a difficult one, if successful, it would be a new chapter in space travel.
