2014 Promises Tourism and an Up-close Look at a Comet  |  This Week In Space History

ED NOTE: In a departure from the norm, this week’s installment looks forward rather than back.

by dave dooling

The first space tourists blast off from Spaceport America, Mars gets two new satellites while the Moon welcomes a new rover, and mankind makes its first soft – very, very soft – landing on a comet during 2014. This Week in Space normally highlights an anniversary in our exploration of space. Today we look at events in 2014 that will become future anniversaries, starting with a current anniversary.

Ten years ago this month, the twin Mars Exploration Rovers bounced to a landing on the Red Planet, Spirit on Jan. 5 and Opportunity on Jan. 25. Both far exceeded their 90-day warranties. Spirit lasted three years before getting stuck in the sand in 2009 and losing contact in March 2010, with 7.7 km (4.8 miles) on its odometer. Opportunity, with almost 38.5 km (24 miles), will have made the full 10 years (5.3 Mars years) if it’s still calling in on Jan. 25. One can almost hear it in the plaintive voice of Marvin, the Paranoid Android from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Ninety days. You said this gig was for 90 days. It’s been ten years. I don’t suppose you’re coming back for me. Did you know that Joint-1 in my arm keeps freezing up because of a heater problem? Not that you’d care. Sigh. Ninety days.”

To add insult to injury, attention now is on Curiosity, which landed Aug. 6, 2012, the rover that carries a laser to vaporize rocks for chemical tests (more than 102,000 zaps so far) and cheerily tweets: “I date rocks. 1st Mars rock-exposure age measurements may help in the search for signs of organic carbon.” Curiosity will spend 2014 continuing its 19km (12-mile) trek from Gale Crater up Mount Sharp, albeit with wheels that are wearing faster than expected. Two new Mars orbiters arrive, NASA’s MAVEN – Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution – on Sept. 22 and India’s Mangalyaan on Sept. 24. This will make India the fourth nation to reach Mars. MAVEN will become the seventh node in the slowly growing interplanetary internet.

Earthlings will get more views from the first lunar rover since the Soviet Union’s Lunkhod 2 on Jan. 15, 1973. Chang’e 3, launched by the People’s Republic of China on Dec. 1, touched down on Dec. 14 in Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows). A few hours later its Yutu (Jade Rabbit) rover rolled off to explore the surface near the lander and beam images back. The mission – another 90-day gig – is part of a long-range program by China to develop human flights to the Moon and beyond.

The European Space Agency (ESA) attempts the first-ever landing on a comet with the Rosetta spacecraft, launched March 2, 2004. After flybys of Earth, Mars, and two asteroids, Rosetta has been hibernating since June 2011. It awakes on Jan. 20, and ESA starts preparing it to orbit comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in April and map the surface. In November, Rosetta deploys Philae, named for the island where the Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799. Because the comet’s gravity is so low (it’s only 4km, or 2.4 miles, wide), Philae’s landing pads will extend screws to secure it to the comet’s ice. Like their namesakes, the two craft will help us decode the origins of the solar system.

Elsewhere in the solar system, NASA’s Cassini marks its tenth anniversary orbiting Saturn on June 11 and during the year will make another 12 flybys of Titan, Saturn’s moon that has a nitrogen atmosphere and hydrocarbon lakes. In January NASA’s Juno crosses the orbit of Mars on its way to Jupiter in 2016. New Horizons crosses the orbit of Neptune on Aug. 24 its way to the first-ever flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015.

In early January Europe’s Gaia spacecraft, launched Dec. 19, settles into position at L2, a gravitational balance point between Earth and Moon. It will spend the next five years mapping the locations, velocities, and brightness of 1 billion stars. It will also hunt for sunlike stars and earthlike planets.

International Space Station (ISS) stays busy as astronauts and cosmonauts conduct research on fluids, flames, and physiology, among other fields. The six-person crews rotate in three-person increments with the Soyuz TMA-12M through -15M launches. Notably, Soyuz TMA-14M will carry Yelena Serova, only the fourth Russian woman in space and the first since 1997, and Soyuz TMA-15M will carry Samantha Cristoforetti, the first woman from Italy.

SpaceX’s Dragon commercial resupply craft makes four supply runs to ISS, and Orbital Science’s smaller Cygnus makes three (one delayed from late 2013). Additional resupply missions are made by Japan’s H-II Transfer Vehicle, Europe’s last Automated Transfer Vehicle, and four Russian Progress spacecraft. Russia makes its last major addition to ISS with launch of the Nauka Multipurpose Laboratory Module, delayed from 2007, and a European Robotic Arm in April. The arm, Europe’s first, can “walk” to any work site around station.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft makes its first test flight in September on Exploration Flight Test-1 with a Delta 4-Heavy on a full-up test of the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle designed to carry astronauts to the Moon and beyond. Although it has been in work since 2004, its first manned flight is still six years away.

Finally, the age of space tourism begins in late 2014 with the inaugural passenger flights of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo from Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, NM. (Passengers on previous U.S. and Russian missions were listed as spaceflight participants, and disliked the tourist designation.) Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Galactic, and his family will be the first passengers. They follow by a few weeks the Sept. 29 tenth anniversary of the historic second flight by SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari XPrize and set the stage for this new era in space. The same craft making a second crewed flight within a week of the first one was the key.

The goal was to open a commercial highway to space. So far it has been a steep on-ramp facing multiple challenges. Still, as rocket pioneer Robert Goddard wrote more than a century ago, “the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.”

Dave Dooling is education director at the New Mexico Museum of Space History and a veteran space writer. He can be reached at dave.dooling (at) state.nm.us.