The Five Largest Innovations to Expect in 2023
We may be a mere 23 years into the century but already it has been a doozy. In 2022, we saw impressive technological feats, including a fusion energy breakthrough, the first successful all-electric passenger plane test and the release of bivalent Covid-19 booster vaccines.
As we enter into 2023, what can we expect? At Inverse, we aren’t in the business of fortune-telling, but the innovations we saw in the last 12 months can help us predict what might be in store for the next — from driver-free transportation to commercial space exploration to (finally) clean energy for all
Cheaper EVS and Drive-free Shipping
This year will usher in more affordable EVS, allowing a bigger chunk of the population to drive sustainably. For example, GM is rolling out cheaper models that run for around $30,000, expanding the choices for drivers on a budget.
Tesla’s least expensive offering, the Model 3, starts at around $46,990 — while it’s currently the best-selling electric car in the United States, some of these new models could knock the Model 3 off its throne.
If you don’t feel like driving, it may soon get easier to hail an autonomous car. In 2023, Uber plans to launch a fully driverless service, and GM’S robo taxi division (which now operates in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin) aims to enter a “large number of markets.”
Cars aren’t the only mode of transportation to ditch drivers. Autonomous semi-trucks could surge ahead in 2023 and, soon enough, forever change the way we get our goods.
In the coming months, self-driving trucks are planned to hit Texas highways. Companies like Aurora Innovation and Tusimple will start to test their wheels without any human backup drivers — which has concerned some safety advocates, Reuters reported Driverless semis have already been tested out in Arizona and Arkansas, but Texas is particularly attractive for autonomous truck companies to set up hubs because it sits in the middle of one of the country’s busiest freight routes.
Commercial Space Firsts
Just as in 2022, space magnates are still shooting for the Moon. But before Spacex can take on lunar landings, it needs to send Starship on its first orbital test flight. Chris Impey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, thinks that this is the year.
Spacex “will have its first successful orbital flight of the Starship, a game-changing rocket in the effort to get astronauts to the Moon and Mars within a decade,” he reports
While it may be a few years before people step foot on the Moon again, uncrewed commercial landers could touch down within a few months.
In December, the Japanese firm ispace launched a lunar lander that’s scheduled to touch down in March. If things work out, ispace will become the first private company to land on the Moon — that
is, if it isn’t beaten by landers from the U.s.-based companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, which are slated to arrive around the same time.
In another victory for private space, Spacex’s Polaris Dawn mission could accomplish the first-ever commercial spacewalk. It’s scheduled to take off no earlier than March 2023 at NASA’S Kennedy Space Center. Four passengers, including billionaire mission funder Jared Isaacman, will travel to a maximum orbit of around 745 miles above Earth — the highest of any crewed vehicle since the Apollo missions.
Polaris Dawn will also offer crucial data to scientists on the ground: For example, the astronauts will wear smart contact lenses with tiny sensors that measure eye pressure while in microgravity (past NASA missions have revealed that space travel affects people’s vision). They’ll also receive a brain scan just hours after splashing down to Earth to examine how microgravity impacts the brain.
Another potential breakthrough: The first methane-powered rocket could reach space this year if United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket aces its first orbital test (which was originally planned for 2020). Methane is more stable than the liquid hydrogen powering most rockets today. It can also be stored at more moderate temperatures than the super-cold ones required for liquid hydrogen. In fact, astronauts could even make methane fuel while on Mars for the journey back home.