StarDate Online | Space exploration and scheduled missions in 2009


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Explorations in 2009

January 14

Artist’s concept shows Stardust approaching Earth.

The Stardust spacecraft got a gravitational “kick” when it flew past Earth. After gathering particles from Comet Wild 2, the craft was retargeted to fly past Comet Tempel 1 in 2011, and the Earth encounter will give it enough extra energy to rendezvous with the comet. Another spacecraft slammed an instrumented probe into Tempel 1 in 2005, so the follow-up observations will look into the crater gouged by the impact.

February 18

Dawn lifts off in 2007.

The Dawn spacecraft scanned Mars as it flew past the planet. Dawn used Mars’ gravity to give it an extra “kick” to the asteroid Vesta. It will enter orbit around Vesta in August 2011, spend a few months studying it, then proceed to Ceres, the largest asteroid.

March 4

NASA launched Kepler, an orbiting observatory that will search for Earth-sized planets in Earth-like orbits in other star systems. Its telescope will monitor thousands of stars, searching for tiny dips in their light as planets pass in front of them.

June 2

NASA plans to launch twin Moon missions, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). LRO will photograph the lunar surface, use a laser altimeter to map its contours, and “sniff” for water ice inside craters at the poles. LCROSS will slam into one of those craters to try to blast some of the ice into space, making it easier for LRO and ground-based telescopes to detect it.

September 29

‘Rays’ of bright material surround a young impact crater in this 2008 Messenger image.

The Messenger spacecraft will fly past Mercury for the third and final time. The craft will skim to within 125 miles (200 km) of the planet’s surface, observing areas first photographed by the Mariner 10 spacecraft in the 1970s. Messenger will return to Mercury in 2011, but instead of flying past, it will enter orbit around the Sun’s closest planet.

November 2

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is scheduled for launch. A small infrared telescope will snap a picture of a small region of the sky every 11 seconds. Over six months, this will produce a map of the entire infrared sky, with more than 1.5 million pictures. WISE will search for cool, nearby stars, study giant galaxies, and examine both our own solar system and planetary systems around other stars.

Ongoing

Five spacecraft remain in operation at Mars: the Spirit and Opportunity rovers on the surface, and Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and Mars Express in orbit. Venus Express continues to study our closest neighbor from orbit around the planet.

-- Damond Benningfield

Have we visited all the planets in the solar system?

Yes, space probes have visited all of the eight official planets of the solar system.

Here is a listing of the planet visited, most recent spacecraft, and year of visit (or year the mission ended):

Mercury -- Messenger, 2009. Will enter orbit around Mercury in 2011.

Venus -- Venus Express, currently in orbit

Mars -- Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, currently in orbit

Jupiter -- New Horizons, 2007

Saturn -- Cassini, currently in orbit

Uranus -- Voyager 2, 1986

Neptune -- Voyager 2, 1989

Are there plans to return to the Moon?

President Barack Obama canceled NASA's effort to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020, so no new American Moon missions are likely. China has indicated an interest in sending its own explorers, known as taikonauts, to the Moon in the next decade or so.

In preparation for future manned exploration, the Space Agency had launched several robotic missions to map potential landing sites, map mineral resources, and hunt for possible water at the lunar poles. Future missions in this effort are likely to be cut as well.

Will we ever visit other stars?

The prospects for interstellar travel are quite daunting, primarily because stars are so incredibly far away. The nearest star lies more than 24 trillion miles away. At the fastest speed our spacecraft currently attain -- around 100,000 miles an hour or so -- it would take almost 28,000 years to get there. Even at only five percent of the speed of light (an unimaginable engineering feat of almost 34 million miles an hour), the trip would still take almost 82 years, with an equally lengthy return trip.

Our best bet may be to build an enormous colony-type spacecraft capable of sustaining a crew for the decades necessary to reach even the nearest stars. Others believe the distance problem may be avoidable altogether through some exotic twist of physics, such as traveling through a wormhole. While either of these plans might seem unlikely at the present, hope springs eternal among scientists and astronomers. Given adequate time and resources, perhaps an interstellar journey does in fact lie in our future.