Space Year 2024: The Moon Is the Next Frontier

Missions to our natural satellite will follow at a record pace, while the launch of Artemis II with the first crew in lunar quarters since the Apollo program is expected in December. New rockets will make their debut – with great anticipation for European ones – and interplanetary missions. A watershed year to understand who is really in the space that matters.

By Emilio Cozzi

It is the years of the Moon. 2024 is not the first and, certainly, it will not be the last. Traffic to our natural satellite will take up most of the attention, more than half a century after the Apollo program adventure. And it will culminate with Artemis II, the mission destined to bring a crew back to the (not yet on) Moon. The declared effort of NASA, this time, is “to go to stay.” To do this, it is necessary to invent new ways of exploring.
The 2024 calendar, which is sure to be another record year for space launches, is full of suggestive appointments and crucial moments. Probes will also launch to Mars, Jupiter and Venus. Tests of new rockets will mark the progress of countries and companies that are emerging from the atmosphere, or that are trying to consolidate a history already rich in achievements reached. Each one will represent a turning point to measure the ambition of each and the place assigned to it in the “space that matters”.

Commercial Exploration of the Nasa Program
In January, on the 8th, we leave for the Moon, with a double debut: the inaugural launch of the new Vulcan Centaur rocket from United Launch Alliance (ULA) will indeed push the Peregrine lander and the Iris rover from the Astrobotic company. The first of three missions from Intuitive Machines will leave shortly after, on January 13th. The American company, as well as Astrobotic, participates in the Nasa “Commercial Lunar Payload Services” (Clps) program, missions for the purpose of testing exploration technologies on the lunar surface. (IM-1) will bring the Nova-C lander to the Malapert A crater, near the South Pole of the Moon. In these months, the technological foundations will be laid to understand where to establish the first colony and how to exploit in situ resources.
IM-2 is also scheduled for the first quarter of the year, this time to land with a lander, a rover, a “hopper”, a drill to drill the regolith and ice and several other instruments, small rovers and technological demonstrators from private companies, near the Shackleton crater, still at the South Pole. Right there where the astronauts of the Artemis program are destined to land. IM-3 will instead land in the Oceanus Procellarum, with several loads including a Nasa rover. Blue Ghost 1 from Firefly Aerospace, scheduled to launch in the second half of 2024, will carry a series of payloads, ten sponsored by Nasa, as part of the Clps initiative. The Blue Ghost lander of the Texan company will land in the Mare Crisium to study the lunar regolith.

Japan and China; then the United States
On September 6, 2023, a small robot named Slim launched from Japan. The mission is expected to arrive on the Moon on January 19. It will be the third attempt by JAXA (the Japanese space agency) to land on the lunar surface, primarily to test landing capabilities.
Later in the year, exploration will begin in earnest. In May, China will embark on a new enterprise that has never been attempted before: Chang’e-6 will head to the far side of the Moon, like Chang’e-4 (the first man-made object to land there, in early 2019). This time, however, the mission will also include the collection of samples to be brought back to Earth.
In November, a new Astrobotic lander (Griffin) will launch with the Viper rover on top of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. This is an ambitious mission that will explore the surroundings of the Nobile crater near the South Pole for over three months. Viper is expected to drill into the permanently shadowed areas in search of water (in the form of ice) using a drill and spectrometer. It will be looking for resources that could be extracted and used by future human settlements.

The Japanese company ispace will also try again with the Hakuto-R mission to become the first private company to land on the Moon (and put its feet, and wheels, on the Moon with a micro rover).

In December, if there are no delays, the year’s major space event is scheduled to take place: the first astronauts will return to the vicinity of the Moon, aboard the giant Space Launch System. Fifty-two years after their predecessors (it was Apollo 17 in December 1972), three Americans and a Canadian will venture to the Moon, sitting in the Orion capsule, for the Artemis II mission. Their ten-day journey will skim our natural satellite before finding themselves, with a highly elongated orbit, in the farthest point from Earth ever reached by a human being. The mission will be a general test to test the transportation systems (the rocket, the Orion capsule, and its European Service Module) to the lunar orbit.

It will only be with Artemis III – officially still scheduled for the end of 2025 but now expected to be postponed at least until the following year – and especially with Starship, that for the first time in over half a century astronauts will be able to land, step on, and leave their footprints on the lunar dust. First, of course, a vehicle is needed to travel the last miles.

Starship, Ariane, and the Others
2024 promises to be a year of spectacular shows from Boca Chica, Texas. From the Starbase overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, it is certain that other Starships will launch. After the first two launches that were only partially successful and ended in a bang, unfortunately in the literal sense, SpaceX will have to hurry to test its own spacecraft. It is needed by NASA to land on the Moon, of course, but also to transport people on cruises in deep space, and to deliver the most disparate loads into orbit, with the most powerful rocket ever built. There are many projects still on paper for a crucial vector that has so far spent only a few minutes in space.

An important appointment concerns Italy: on the night of January 9-10, Ax-3, the third mission of the private company Axiom, will launch to the International Space Station. On board will be Walter Villadei, colonel of the Air Force, along with three other astronauts: Michael López-Alegría, former NASA, the first Turkish astronaut to fly in space, Alper Gezeravci, and the Swede Marcus Wandt, selected from among the reserves of the European Space Agency (ESA). Their journey is not funded by space agencies or private individuals, but by their respective governments. This is also a paradigm shift, which exploits the private service of access to orbit (Axiom is “the travel agency”, the launcher and the capsule are from SpaceX).

Between June 15 and the end of July, Europe should instead witness the debut of the long-awaited Ariane 6. The “heavy” vector built by ArianeGroup, originally scheduled to be in service by 2020, will tell if even the Old Continent can return to sit among the greats of space claiming its own autonomy of access to Earth and lunar orbit. A similar story for Vega C: after the failure, in December 2022, of the first commercial launch and after the case of the missing tanks of the last Vega, whose last launch is currently scheduled for September 2024, Avio cannot afford to make mistakes.

In April 2022, Amazon bought 18 Ariane 6 launches to put the Kuiper constellation satellites into orbit. Some of them were also unexpectedly added to those on board Falcon 9, provided by the direct competitor of satellite internet, SpaceX, which has its own Starlink. However, in 2024, Jeff Bezos’s company could launch its own rocket into space, the New Glenn, twice as powerful as a Falcon 9, like the latter partially reusable, and potentially capable of encroaching on market segments served by Elon Musk’s company.

Speaking of spacecraft, the United States could double: with years of delay compared to the schedule, a Boeing Cst-Starliner capsule with a crew on board is scheduled to fly in April. It is the Boeing Crew Flight Test (Cft) of NASA.
Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunita Williams will fly to the International Space Station. If everything goes according to plan, the United States will have two shuttles to send their astronauts into orbit. A cargo, the Dream Chaser of Sierra Aerospace, is also ready to debut to shuttle supplies to the inhabitants of the orbiting outpost. It is a minishuttle, reusable with aerodynamic reentry, just like the Space Shuttle. And also intended for human transport.

Let’s not forget India. After becoming, in August 2023, the fourth country to land on the Moon, it now promises to stretch its step even further: in 2024, New Delhi will test Gaganyaan, its own astronaut transport vehicle. The first of at least two missions will launch up to an altitude of 15 kilometers, focusing on abortion simulation procedures. A second test flight will follow with Vyommitra, a humanoid robot, climbing higher. India’s first crewed space flight could take place as early as the end of the year, although it is more likely to be seen in 2025.

Deep Space: Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and the Asteroid
Beyond the gates of Earth’s orbit, there is a universe to explore. And fortunately, the missions built to do so will not be lacking. Two probes already well underway on their cruise through the Solar System will make important encounters: in August, Juice, from the European Space Agency, will return to brush the Earth, to receive a gravitational assist on its route to the moons of Jupiter. BepiColombo, on the other hand, will adjust its orbit with a flyby of Mercury in September.

In the same month, September, the Japanese Martian Moons Exploration (Mmx) will launch. This is a probe designed to descend and collect samples from the natural satellite of Mars, Phobos, to find out if the moons of the Red Planet were originated from captured asteroids or by an impact with a massive celestial body.

Europa Clipper of NASA will also point to Jupiter, specifically to Europa, in search of potential signs of life under its icy crust, where there seems to be an ocean of liquid water. The launch is scheduled for October on a Falcon Heavy rocket. Another European mission will be Hera, directed instead to Didymos, the binary asteroid system of which the NASA probe Dart, in 2022, hit the smaller Dimorphos, deviating its trajectory. The purpose of Hera will be to investigate the crater formed and the amount of debris ejected from the collision. An investigation useful to understand how to defend ourselves in the future from a possible asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

Rocket Lab and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will be partners in the first private, pioneering mission dedicated to the exploration of Venus. It will be launched on board an Electron rocket no earlier than December 2024 to look for evidence to support the presence of organic compounds in the cloudy layer of the upper atmosphere, where there could be temperature and pressure conditions favorable to life. On the surface of the “twin of Earth,” in fact, there are over 400 degrees Celsius, enough to melt lead.
And then there is everything else, the rovers on Mars, telescopes like the new James Webb or the elderly Hubble that will continue, we hope for a long time, to give wonders. Projects for new space stations, such as Axiom itself, which should start adding “private pieces” to the ISS in the coming year.

It may not be necessary to land on Mars to feel like a spacefaring civilization.