2024 Space Highlights
- 20th Dec 2024
- Author: Alex Thompson
It’s been a year of new Dawns and chang’e in space. Let’s look back at some of the highlights of the past twelve months.
Missions
The latest chapter of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program was a huge success with the launch and return of the Chang’e 6 mission.
It began on 3 May with the launch of the spacecraft, followed by the lander and rover touching down on the far side of the Moon on 1 June. After collecting nearly 2kg of the lunar soil, the ascender returned the sample to the orbiter module which successfully returned to Earth on 25 June, landing in inner Mongolia. This was the first time a sample from the Moon’s far side had been returned to Earth.
This mission brought to a close the China National Space Administration’s (CNSA) third phase of their lunar program. The fourth and final step will see China look to build a robotic research station and facilitate crewed missions to the Moon in the 2030’s.
October saw the launch of not one, but two space exploration missions in the space of a week. First, ESA’s Hera spacecraft set off on its course to the Didymos binary asteroid system on 7 October. It will study the impact the DART mission had when it intentionally collided with the smaller Dimorphos asteroid in 2022, changing its orbit around the larger Didymos asteroid.
This was purposefully conducted to simulate how we could deflect away a potential rock hurtling towards Earth in the future. Hera will measure the size and morphology of the crater from this impact, evaluating the efficiency of the deflection, as well as the debris cloud caused by DART and the asteroid system’s composition and physical properties.
One week later on 14 October, NASA launched their big mission of the year, Europa Clipper. This will arrive at Jupiter in 2030 where it will complete 49 flybys of its icy moon, Europa. It will look for evidence of a long-theorised subsurface ocean underneath the icy crust, which would increase the likelihood of alien life existing within this moon. Europa Clipper won’t look for life itself, but it will help compliment the work been done on ESA’s JUICE mission, also set to arrive at the Jovian system early next decade.
Goodbye...
For as many exciting new missions as we saw in 2024, inevitably it was also time to say goodbye to a couple of old friends.
Ingenuity made its final flight in January. The mini-helicopter completed seventy-two flights since arriving on Mars with Perseverance in 2021, helping to inform its rover buddy where it should travel. It covered more than 17km over a combined two hours and eight minutes of airtime before a rotor blade broke off upon landing on what ultimately became its final flight. Perseverance continues to travel the Martian landscape alone.
It was also a bon voyage to the United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Delta IV Heavy rocket after nearly twenty years of service. The largest of the Delta IV family, standing at over 70m high, the Heavy had the largest capacity of any launch vehicle in the world following the 2011 retirement of the space shuttle program, and was still the third largest at the time of its final flight in April. But as the saying goes, “out with the old, in with the new….”
Rocket Launches
New records for the number of both attempted and successful orbital launches were set this year, with several exciting developments in the next generation of rocket technology.
We only had to wait a week into 2024 for the first big news, that the Delta IV’s replacement, Vulcan Centaur, would be making its maiden flight on 8 January. It then completed another flight on 4 October, recording the two successes required to certify the rocket for National Security Space Launch (NSSL) missions. Over a dozen launches are currently planned for 2025.
Three days later, Orienspace’s new launch vehicle, Gravity-1, completed its first flight. It is both China’s most powerful launch vehicle and the world’s most powerful solid-fuel carrier rocket, with a stunningly quick launch process that can take place only five hours after the rocket is completed.
Steps forward were also taken by ESA’s Ariane 6 with a partially successful first launch. The rocket reached orbit and successfully released Cubesats from its payload, however whilst attempting to deorbit the upper stage the auxiliary propulsion system failed, preventing the stage from relighting. Another flight is planned in the first quarter of 2025.
A mixed bag for the world’s most powerful rocket, SpaceX’s Starship, with a failed March launch followed by three successful flights. The most newsworthy of these took place on 13 October, with the vehicle’s fifth flight the first to demonstrate booster recovery, as well as being the first time there were no engine failures.
And the Boeing Starliner capsule carried its first two passengers in June. Whilst it successfully delivered the astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), it was far from a resounding success….
Human Spaceflight
The biggest media story of the year came from the aftermath of the aforementioned Starliner mission.
Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore, originally set for an eight-day mission to the ISS, will instead spend eight-months in space due to a mechanical issue with the Starliner spacecraft. Due to several issues including helium leaks and thrusters malfunctioning, the craft was deemed unsafe for astronauts to return home on, instead returning uncrewed several months later. The crew that arrived at the ISS in September was reduced from four to two, allowing Williams and Wilmore to return to Earth with them on a SpaceX Crew Dragon in 2025. Originally set for February, the return has now been delayed to late March at the earliest as NASA and SpaceX announced they needed more time to process, test and integrate the new Dragon capsule that will be used to launch the replacement Crew-10 - a handover has to take place before they journey home.
Luckily there was also a lot of success stories in 2024.
Axiom Mission 3 successfully completed a three-week stint docked to the ISS in January. The private mission consisted of astronauts Michael Lopez-Alegria, Walter Villadei, Marcus Wandt and Alper Gezeraci, who became Turkey’s first astronaut. Other pioneering space travellers included first Belarusian civilian Marnya Vasileuskaya and British citizen Nicolina Elrick, who simultaneously became the first ethnic Singaporean and first Scottish woman to reach space.
We should also draw attention to the ISS not being the only space station to welcome new inhabitants this year, as the Chinese Tiangong Station saw the arrival of its seventh and eighth crew with the successful launches and docking of Shenzhou 18 and 19. The former mission helped contribute to a new record of nineteen people in space simultaneously in September, with the fifteen people across the two space stations joined in orbit by the crew of private mission Polaris Dawn. This private mission travelled 1,400km away from our planet, the furthest humans have travelled since the Apollo era. It also saw the first commercial spacewalk and Sarah Gillis becoming the youngest person to complete an EVA (extra-vehicular activity), aged 30.
And finally, a huge congratulations to Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko who broke the world record (space record?) for longest combined time in space, smashing the previous best of 878 days. After spending over a year on the ISS on his latest mission, Kononenko raised the bar to a remarkable of 1110 days, 14 hours and 57 minutes!
We hope you've enjoyed this look back at the past twelve months. Join us in a few days as we look ahead to the big things in store for space in 2025!
Full references / credits:
(Banner) ESA's Hera Mission. Credit: ESA
(1) Chang'e 6. Credit: CGTN
(2) Europa Clipper. Credit: NASA
(3) The Ingenuity craft. Credit: NASA
(4) Vulcan Centaur. Credit: United Launch Alliance
(5) Ariane launch. Credit: CNES/ESA/Arianespace-ArianeGroup/Optique Video CSG/S Martin
(6) Astronaut Sunita Williams. Credit: NASA
