Big Rockets, Massive Asteroids, and Space Highlights for 2022

Space flight offered Endless glasses in 2021.

Sometimes, it was too overwhelming. Two new rovers have landed on Mars, one of which is shadowed by an experimental helicopter. Two billionaires hurled themselves to the edge of space, and a third billionaire flew himself higher into orbit. Then William Shatner flew into space, and a fourth billionaire enjoyed a stay on the International Space Station.

It didn’t end there. China began building a fully operational space station, but relied on a large rocket that reached orbit and then became uncontrollable when some of it re-entered the atmosphere. On the International Space Station, a couple of mishaps sent the outpost on unplanned turns in orbit. NASA said goodbye to an asteroid and returned to Earth carrying samples of it. But NASA has embarked on a new mission to crash into another asteroid to study defending humanity from a future space-rock attack.

Much more has happened throughout the year, and 2022 looks just as busy. You can catch up on these and more great moments here: subscribe to The Times Space and Astronomy Calendar at this link.

Here’s what could happen in space flights in 2022.

Gigantic Rockets Will Roar

Two rockets that have never been to space before – the NASA Space Launch System and the SpaceX Starship – are expected to take off next year.

They’re both huge and as different as two rockets can be.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, is NASA’s interplanetary launch vehicle. It’s years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Each launch, built by traditional aerospace contractors, costs about $2 billion and each rocket can only be used once. NASA said the Artemis program would not be able to get astronauts back to the moon without the giant rocket. The first unmanned test flight will lift a capsule called Orion around the moon and return it to Earth. The launch, known as Artemis 1, is scheduled for March or April.

Starship, by contrast, is built exclusively by SpaceX. The fully reusable rocket is at the center of company founder Elon Musk’s vision to send humans to Mars. A version of Starship is also planned to land NASA’s astronauts on the lunar surface. The upper half of the silvery spacecraft has completed multiple high-altitude test flights that have resulted in spectacular explosions. It made a successful landing in one test. Sometime during the year, a Starship prototype with no crew on board was tuned to mate with a large reusable booster stage. When the rocket takes off from a SpaceX launch site in Texas, it will go into orbit before splashing out on the shores of a Hawaiian island.

If 2021 were the year of missions to Mars, next year could be dominated by trips to the moon. Nine missions from various countries and private companies may attempt to orbit or land on the Moon.

Five are NASA-sponsored, and some are more likely to happen in a timely manner than others. In addition to the Orion capsule orbiting the Moon and returning to Earth, CubeSat, a miniature satellite called CAPSTONE, may be lifted by Rocket Lab from the New Zealand launch site in March. It would study a lunar orbiter that could be used by a future NASA and European moon base. Three more missions to the lunar surface are the work of private companies supported under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The effort aims to replicate NASA’s success in relying on companies like SpaceX to transport cargo and then astronauts to the International Space Station. Intuitive Machines, a Houston company, may be the first to make the journey.

In 2022, the rest of the moon’s robotic visitors come from other countries. India may attempt to remake the failed 2019 Moon landing in the summer. And Russia says it aims to land on the moon for the first time since 1976. A South Korean lunar orbiter could take off with a SpaceX rocket in August. And ispace, a Japanese company, is working on a landing craft to transport various cargoes to the surface of the moon, including a rover from the United Arab Emirates. Which of these missions sticks to your calendar is in a very thin lunar mood.

Completing China’s Space Station

Recently, China kept its word when it said its space program would reach a certain timeline. So if it says it will finish building the Tiangong space station in orbit by 2022, there is a good chance it will.

In 2021, China added the Tianhe space module to low earth orbit and sent two different teams of astronauts to live there. The second crew will return home in 2022, and perhaps mid-year Wentian, a laboratory module, could launch into orbit and dock with the Tianhe module. Later in the year, a third piece, the Mengtian laboratory, could complete the Tiangong space station.

Both Wentian and Mengtian were to be launched atop China’s largest rocket, the Long March 5B. Last May, this rocket started to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere uncontrollably, surprising many people and increasing its chances of causing damage and injury when it lands. Although the rocket crashed into the Indian Ocean without incident, it remains unclear whether China will change the way it manages it. That’s twice as much in 2022, as Earthlings’ “where will it land?” It means you can play the game.

NASA has closely studied a large number of asteroids, but now it plans to deliberately crash into one. In September, the Double Asteroid Redirect Test is expected to crash into Dimorphos, a small rock orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. Collision with an asteroid is a potential tactic for planetary defense – if a giant space rock is heading towards Earth, some scientists say humanity’s best shot is to change course and miss our world. The DART mission will provide data on the effectiveness of this approach.

Other asteroids are calling you. Psyche, a large object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, appears to be mostly made of iron and other metals. This suggests that in the early history of the solar system, Psyche was the core of an object that failed to transform into a planet. A NASA science mission named after the object is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in the summer. The spacecraft, scheduled to arrive in 2026, will give scientists their first up-close look at this strange metallic world.