With the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) developing technologies for future missions to Mars, and new launch dates planned for the SpaceX Crew-10 mission, the year 2025 is expected to see deeper space explorations.
Among a few important lineups are missions like the SpaceX Crew-10 mission which has a new launch date. NASA has decided to utilise the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, named Endeavor, for the upcoming Crew-10 mission. NASA astronaut and mission commander Anne McClain will lead two other astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut on the journey to the orbiting outpost, now targeting a liftoff from the Kennedy Space Centre on March 12. This will facilitate NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore’s return to Earth earlier than planned. The adjustment aims to reduce the extended duration of Williams and Wilmore’s mission.
In another development, NASA is set to launch Pandora this year. A small but vital satellite, Pandora, is expected to study 20 exoplanets. It will analyse their atmospheres for water, clouds and haze, as well as study the world beyond the solar system, and the activity of their host stars with long-duration multiwavelength observations. These elements are key indicators of potential habitability. The data will establish a firm foundation for interpreting measurements by the space agency’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and future missions that will search for habitable worlds, said the agency.
The satellite will use an innovative 17-inch (45-centimetre)-wide all-aluminum telescope to simultaneously measure the visible and near-infrared brightness of the host star and obtain near-infrared spectra of the transiting planet. The project is a joint effort of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, and a host of other institutions.
Among a few of NASA’s important lunar explorations is developing technologies to study “moon dust” which include the electrodynamic dust shield (EDS) and the stereo camera for lunar plume-surface studies (SCALPSS). These technologies will help NASA understand how to prevent dust accumulation and erosion.
Another lunar exploration is NASA’s ‘Lunar Trailblazer’ mission where the small satellite will orbit about 100 kilometres above the lunar surface, producing the best-yet maps of water on the moon. Lunar Trailblazer will discover where the Moon’s water is, what form it is in, and how it changes over time. Observations gathered during the spacecraft’s two-year prime mission will contribute to the understanding of water cycles on airless bodies throughout the solar system while also supporting future human and robotic missions to the Moon by identifying where water is located.
While NASA is developing capabilities to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, the mission’s goals include scientific exploration and discovery. There is NASA’s SPHEREx mission which will survey the Milky Way galaxy looking for water ice and other key ingredients for life. In the search for these frozen compounds, the mission will focus on molecular clouds — collections of gas and dust in space — like one imaged by the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope. NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft took another successful step toward flight with the conclusion of a series of engine performance tests. In preparation for the X-59’s planned first flight this year, NASA and Lockheed Martin successfully completed the aircraft’s engine run tests in January. NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits on the apron outside Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility at dawn in Palmdale, California.
The X-59 is the centrepiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to address one of the primary challenges to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.
Recently, NASA spacecraft brought samples from the asteroid Bennu. The 4.5-billion-year-old asteroid is thought to have formed in the first 10 million years of the solar system’s existence. Asteroid samples fetched by NASA after an in-depth analysis found that the material has revealed organic molecules, including building blocks of life. It is believed that the results bolster the theory that asteroids that crashed into Earth in 2023 may have delivered the ingredients for life.