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- In 2024, no humans will approach the moon, but robots will do the work and many more space adventures await the curious and specialists.
- From the departure of investigator Hera to the experience of a new total solar eclipse, here is a brief tour of the starry events that will shape this year.
- In France, the year 2024 will – we hope – be marked by the first launch of the highly strategic Ariane 6 rocket in Kourou.
You might as well just get rid of the bad news. NASA took charge of cooling the atmosphere after New Year’s Eve by announcing that no more astronauts will return to the side of the moon this year, 2024. We’ll have to wait until the end of 2025 to see the Artemis 2 manned mission take the tour to the night star and probably see a human set foot there in 2026. There was also no start for the first German-French rover Idéfix. It was supposed to set off for Mars (more precisely its moon Phobos) in September as part of the Japanese Martian Moons Exploration (MMX) mission. But the Japanese space agency has also just postponed this trip, which could bring back samples, to 2026.
But these launch delays will not prevent Space Year 2024 from being special, rich in emotion, promise of exploration and thrill. 20 minutes helps you tick off the moments when you need to have your head in the stars
January 19: Due to lack of humans, robots will be on the moon
While they wait for humans, it is the robots that “will play the role of scouts on the Moon and the momentum continues,” assures Olivier Sanguy, head of space news at the Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse. The specialist will meet on January 19 for the Japanese SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) mission, which, in his opinion, is “unfairly overlooked.” “Due to a transmission delay of one second, it is impossible to remotely control a moon landing,” he explains. Either we land like Apollo, even if we encounter an obstacle, or we use other technologies.” For SLIM, the Japanese will test for the first time an integrated method for “face recognition on lunar soil” that is able to identify craters or rocks and avoid them at the last moment.
Normally, the Chinese, who are announcing a manned flight for 2029, have to achieve another lunar feat in May with their Chang’e 6 mission: it has to bring back samples from the other side for the first time. And let’s also, let’s be chauvinistic, allow the French DORN instrument to measure radon emissions.
April 8: total solar eclipse
Fancy a mystical or magical moment? There’s still time to secure tickets to Texas, northern Mexico or even eastern Canada, the top locations to view the April 8 total solar eclipse. Experts predict a complete occultation of the sun by the moon, which could last up to four minutes.
While the next total solar eclipse, on August 12, 2026, will only be truly impressive from Siberia or the North Pole, this year’s solar eclipse – the fifteenth of the 21st century – promises great publicity. “We are in a very populated geographical area with potentially strong opportunities for population movements, so it will be a closely watched eclipse,” predicts Olivier Sanguy. NASA plans to do a lot to popularize astronomy, only to bring down some “Earth platists.”
From June 15th: the strategic launch of Ariane 6
Space Europe, which launched just three rockets in 2023, compared to 107 from Elon Musk’s Space alone. Everything depends on the first flight of the Ariane 6 launch vehicle, which is now four years late. The launch from Kourou is currently announced by the European Space Agency (ESA) for June 15th to July 31st.
October: The Hera investigation returns to the “crime scene”.
The survival of humanity may one day depend on the success of the mission of the “soldier” Hera. This ESA probe is scheduled to launch in October towards the tiny asteroid Dimorphos. Now an old acquaintance, because it was he who was hit in the style of Bruce Willis on September 26, 2022 Armageddonfrom NASA’s Dart mission.
This test, carried out to find out whether we could one day deflect a celestial object threatening Earth, was a success: a 17-meter crater was formed on Dimorphos, and its orbit around the asteroid – larger – Didymos was changed. Hera is tasked with “returning to the scene of the crime” to collect further data on the consequences of the collision in order to strengthen our planetary defense system.
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