The European Space Agency (ESA) has planned, for 2024, the autonomous return to space, with the inaugural flight of Ariane 6, the resumption of Vega-C activities and the launch of the Hera planetary defense mission.
The graduation of the new class of ESA astronauts, the launch of the EarthCare Earth observation satellite or the inauguration of the LUNA installation, a simulator of a mission to Earth’s natural satellite, are other events in the agency’s activity plan for 2024, reported this Tuesday the Efe agency.
The big moment of the year for ESA will be, after several delays, the inaugural flight of Ariane 6, scheduled between June 15th and July 31st, a new rocket that will once again give Europe autonomous access to space.
With this new rocket, which is now undergoing final tests, it will be possible to reach Earth orbit and deep space, which facilitates European navigation, Earth observation, scientific and security programs.
Furthermore, flights of Vega-C, a medium-sized launcher that will expand Europe’s autonomy in space, will resume in the autumn, facilitating new mission possibilities, including return-to-Earth operations with the ESA Rider space re-entry vehicle.
Another highlight will be the launch of Hera, a planetary defense mission and the second part of another called DART by NASA (North American space agency), which in September 2022 collided with an asteroid to deflect it.
The launch of Hera is scheduled for October, from Cape Canaveral (USA), aboard a SpaceX rocket. Its final destination will be the binary asteroid Didymos, to carry out studies on both this and Dimorphos, which was deflected by DART.
It has been more than a decade since ESA trained its last astronauts, but this year, in April, the new class will finish its journey of more than a year of training, consisting of five starters.
ESA activity will continue on the International Space Station. In mid-January, Marcus Wandtm will travel, who during his first stay will be a specialist for the Axiom-3 mission, with whom he will participate in microgravity research and dissemination activities for 14 days.
Furthermore, the first Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen, who has been on the Space Station since August for the Muninn mission, with more than 20 European scientific experiments, plans to return to Earth at the end of February.
Several satellites are also planned to be launched this year. In May it will be the turn of Tierra EarthCare, a joint initiative between ESA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
The satellite will investigate the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incoming solar radiation back into space and capturing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface to better understand the evolution of temperature on our planet.
In the summer, the Proba-3 mission will be launched aboard an Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) vehicle, with two small satellites that will study the faint solar corona and surrounding atmosphere, as well as using innovative technologies to measure position with precision of the two spacecraft.
In October, the LUNA facility will open at the European Astronaut Center in Cologne (Germany), designed to recreate the lunar surface, provide a training ground for astronauts and a technology testing center to continue progress towards the Earth’s natural satellite. Earth.
2023-12-27 05:02:00
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