CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, USA (AP) — The Moon, asteroids and new rockets will dominate the space news during 2023.
Elon Musk’s massive rocket reached space on its second test flight, only to explode again. India achieved a successful moon landing, surpassing Russia, whose module crashed. And NASA brought back its first samples from an asteroid.
These are just some of the cosmic hits and misses of 2023. And there’s more to come in 2024.
THE OBSESSION WITH THE MOON
The Moon was the most popular thing this year. Russia, India and a private Japanese company attempted moon landings. Only India was successful, becoming the fourth country to do so. Two American companies, China and the Japanese Space Agency, will seek to carry out moon landings, some as early as January. NASA began 2023 with the presentation of the four astronauts who are scheduled to fly around the Moon at the end of 2024: three Americans and one Canadian. Another crew will land on the moon, but at the moment there is no date.
ROCKET DEBUTS
The largest and most powerful rocket ever built, SpaceX’s Starship, lifted off twice from south Texas in 2023, and both times it exploded and fell into pieces in the Gulf of Mexico. The second test flight took twice as long and covered 150 kilometers (93 miles). SpaceX seeks to first make the unmanned rocket capable of going around the world, and then add satellites and people to it. The next NASA astronauts to walk on the Moon will need the Starship to reach the lunar surface. Three other rockets will debut in 2024: United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan, with a lunar module; Blue Origin’s New Glenn, the company’s first orbital-class rocket; and an improved version of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket.
AN AUTUMN OF ASTEROIDS
NASA called it an asteroid autumn. In September, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft brought back a pile of debris taken from the asteroid Bennu. A couple of weeks later, the Psyche spacecraft took off on a six-year journey toward a metal-rich asteroid of the same name. And in November, the Lucy spacecraft passed by the first asteroid on an itinerary full of them, discovering a mini moon with two merged orbits. Laboratory workers in Houston are still trying to force open a container that landed in the Utah desert with an asteroid sample. So far, scientists have removed 70 grams (2.5 ounces) of the black dust and pieces of stone from Bennu.
SPACIAL TOURISM
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic company began taking tourists on small trips to space in 2023 and made five launches in less than five months from New Mexico. The company only has a few more flights scheduled for the first half of the year, before it is suspended for the development of a rocket that can carry more people on board and fly more frequently. Musk’s SpaceX conducted its second private trip to the International Space Station and has more charter trips scheduled, as well as the first private moonwalk. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin has had no passenger flights since its New Shepard rocket carrying experiments on board crashed in Texas in 2022.
CELESTIAL APPROACHES
The James Webb Space Telescope celebrated its first year of taking cosmic photographs with the release of a wonderful image of the star-forming region closest to Earth. After that, he unveiled a new look at the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant that had been photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope, and that helped discover the oldest black hole to date, a colossus formed 470 million years ago. years after the Big Bang. “James Webb continues to do extraordinary things for us,” said NASA Director Bill Nelson. Hubble is still producing its own glamorous images 30 years after astronauts restored its vision in one of the most exciting space missions in history.
SOLAR ECLIPSES
The American continent was delighted with an annular solar eclipse in October, an appetizer for the total solar eclipse that will occur in April. The Sun, Moon and Earth aligned to create the annular solar eclipse that could be seen from Oregon to Texas and in some parts of Central and South America. The Moon was too far from Earth to completely block the Sun, but it will be at the correct distance on April 8. The total solar eclipse will begin in Mexico and move northeast, passing through Texas, Arkansas, the north-central United States and northern New York, New England and Canada.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
2023-12-13 00:08:15
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