Countdown to space discoveries
A blood moon, a trip to the moon and back for two explorers, a space station crashing to Earth and the launch of a mission to find planets around other stars: these are just some of the exciting things to watch in space in 2018.
If you missed the recent blood moon, don’t worry, you’ll get another total lunar eclipse on the night of July 27 and early morning hours of July 28.
Unlike a solar eclipse, you do not need any special equipment to see a lunar eclipse and it is safe to look at.
There will be a partial solar eclipse on July 13.
Goodbye Kepler, thanks for the exoplanets
The Kepler Space Telescope was launched nearly nine years ago and has changed our view of the cosmos and our place in it, but its mission is coming to an end this year.
Kepler has confirmed about 2500 exoplanets (planets orbiting other stars), with thousands more potential planets. It discovered the first Earthlike planet in a habitable zone, an area where water could exist as a liquid. Kepler also showed that rocky, potentially Earth-like and/or habitable planets are common, with potentially tens of billions existing in our galaxy alone.
After a failure of two reaction wheels (that help it point) in 2013, a new mission, K2, was conceived. It was able to keep stable by using a combination of short thruster firings and using the sun to steer it like a sail.
Kepler continued its exoplanetfinding quest, along with discoveries such as shockwaves from exploding stars and sound waves deep in the heart of stars.
But this extra thruster firing is using up Kepler’s fuel; it is due to run out this year and Nasa will put it into hibernation.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess) is to be launched between March and June, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. We might have overlap between these two exoplanet-discovering machines.
Rockets, rockets and more rockets
The privatisation of space continued this year. US-based Rocket Lab had its first successful launch, from New Zealand.
SpaceX had its first static test of the new Falcon 9 Heavy, the largest rocket since the Saturn V that took US astronauts to the moon.
The Falcon 9 Heavy carried one of CEO Elon Musk’s $200,000 Tesla Roadsters. SpaceX has already announced that two people have paid to go on a tour around the Moon.
It’s not just private companies exploring space; China is aiming for 40 launches in 2018.
Exploring the small things in our solar system
The moon is on India and China’s radar. India’s Chandrayaan-2 is set to land on the moon in March, while Chang’e 4, China’s second lunar rover, is set to land on the far side of the moon at the end of 2018. First it will have to launch a communication satellite, slated for June, to a position called L2, or a special point related to the Earth-moon system that will allow for communications with Earth and the far side of the moon.
While it is a bit early for New Year’s Eve 2018, Nasa already has big plans. New Horizons, the probe that flew by Pluto in 2015 is set to swing past its second icy world, 2014 MU 69, on December 31. Little is known about
2014 MU 69, which is about 6.5 billion kilometres from the sun, other than it might be two objects instead of one and that it needs a better name.
Asteroids are not forgotten in this space exploration. Japan’s Hayabusa2 is set to arrive at asteroid 162173 Ryugu. It’s a new version of Hayabusa, which surveyed the asteroid 25143 Itokawa and took samples before returning to Earth, landing near Woomera, South Australia in
2010.
Nasa’s OSIRIS-REx will arrive at the asteroid Bennu where it will extend an arm to drill down into the asteroid, and return with samples, in what is the next step towards an asteroid mining future.
A falling space station
If you were in Western Australia in
1979, you might have a unique souvenir — part of the US space station Skylab, which re-entered and crashed outside Esperance.
If you’ve seen the 2013 movie Gravity (spoiler alert for those who haven’t) you might remember the final scene in which Sandra Bullock’s character returns home by hijacking Tiangong-1, the Chinese space station.
In March, we are set for a clash of sci-fi against reality when Tiangong-1 comes back down to Earth.
You can track its progress but in short, somewhere between +43 and -43 latitude (or half the Earth), it will re-enter and break apart.
Currently, the likely potential (land) areas are around Central and South America, Northern Africa and the Mediterranean, and Western Australia.
Like Skylab, there are likely to be large pieces that survive re-entry.
That’s a summary of some of the things we’re expecting to happen this year. But as with all science, I’m just as excited for those discoveries that we don’t know about that will happen in
2018.