Each year’s space missions tend to focus on a few topics that are especially interesting at the time. For example, in the history of science, space missions have been centered on the Moon when interest in its discovery was high, but Mars and even space tourism have also been important.
In 2022, a lot of space missions were aimed at going to the Moon. At the same time, a lot of money was spent on developing the technology that would let people go to space as tourists. Now that a new year has started, people seem to be interested in the metal world, in learning more about Jupiter, and in making more and more important progress on the Moon.
Here are the 10 upcoming space missions 2023:
People have different ideas about what SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company that is known for throwing itself into experiments without much planning, will do in 2023. One of its jobs will be to send its next Starship into space, which will be able to take people to the Moon and Mars.
Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for Observations
How soon is too soon to get excited for #Artemis II? 🌙
Check out the flight path for @NASA_Orion’s next Moon mission. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/vOYPvNy0e3
— Lockheed Martin Space (@LMSpace) January 3, 2023
The ASTHROS mission, whose name is shorter and easier to remember, will focus on finding out why some galaxies have stopped making new stars.
Icy Moons of Jupiter: An Explorer
This mission, called JUICE, will start in April from the European spaceport in French Guiana. It will take three years to study Jupiter and its three icy moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
The first time Starship was sent into orbit
People have different ideas about what SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company that is known for throwing itself into experiments without much planning, will do in 2023. One of its jobs will be to send its next Starship into space, which will be able to take people to the Moon and Mars.
Polaris Sunrise
The goal of the first tourist spacewalk, Polaris Dawn, is to make people feel like they are really in space. To that end, the mission will be the first commercial spacewalk, led by billionaire Jared Isaacman and a completely private crew.
Emissions into the Atmosphere Monitoring of Pollution Mission, or TEMPO, is a NASA project that will measure pollution over North America every hour.
https://twitter.com/Chat_GTP/status/1609576579335655424
New rocket firms
In 2023, there will be new rocket companies in addition to the ones we already know. Like the Vulcan Centaur, which was made by the United Launch Alliance, and the New Glenn, which was made by the Blue Origin space company. There could also be a role for new, smaller rockets that are made to carry lightweight satellites into Earth orbit. This project is being done by two American companies, Relativity and ABL Space Systems. This is a big change for space technology, which is becoming more and more linked to the private sector.
Hunt for asteroid Psyche
This year, NASA wants to study an asteroid made of metal called Psyche. This mission, which was announced last year and went through a review phase, is now getting ready to start in October from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission will go to the 225-km-long asteroid, which is mostly made of iron and nickel, to study it. This will be the first time we meet an asteroid made of metal.
OSIRIS-REx
This ship’s job is to bring rocks and soil from the asteroid Bennu to the Utah Test and Training Range, where they will be looked at. If the ship is still in good health after this, it will go on a new mission to study other asteroids. The samples will tell us about the history of our solar system and about asteroids that might be headed toward Earth.
Xuntian
China is getting ready to send its powerful space telescope, Xuntian, into space. This likely won’t happen until the end of this year, 2023. During its planned 10-year mission, this tool will send data to the Chinese space station and study 40% of the sky with its 2.5 billion-pixel camera.
