Space 2013: A New Year of Missions and Events

Mankind has always expected the heavens to be busy, and 2013 will be no different. We no longer imagine gods and goddesses above us — instead, we shoot our own rockets, people, and probes to populate space.

The coming year looks like it will be an exciting one, with emerging countries’ space agencies as well as private entrepreneurs jumping in. NASA will continue to wrestle with its purpose, but it will also provide some spectacular new missions. And we can always expect some unexpected discoveries and announcements.

Here, we take a look at the new year in space and the missions and events we have to look forward to.

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Robots Explore the Solar System

At some point this year, NASA’s incredibly cute and popular Curiosity rover could reach the base of Mount Sharp. This 3-mile-high hill at the center of Gale Crater is the probe’s ultimate goal and the science team is eager to get there. Along the way, it will stop to drill and sample the soil, likely discovering some amazing new things about Mars. But climbing Mount Sharp will allow astronomers to see different layers of rock, which should reveal how and why Mars went from a wet world in the past to the dry one seen today.

Elsewhere in the solar system, NASA’s probes will continue their exemplary exploration. The Juno mission, en route to Jupiter, will make a flyby of Earth to pick up speed in 2013. But other spacecraft might not be so lucky. With its planetary science budget slashed, NASA is not sure it will have sufficient funds to continue the MESSENGER mission around Mercury, which recently spotted ice at the planet’s poles. There are also rumors that the long-running Cassini mission could be on the chopping block. In the meantime, NASA remains most focused on Mars and will begin soliciting proposals for instruments on its new rover, a twin probe to Curiosity.

Image: Curiosity rover’s first picture of Mount Sharp. NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s New Probes

NASA has at least three new missions coming up, all aimed at studying the environment of our neighbors the sun, the moon, and Mars, in 2013. First up is expected to be the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), a spacecraft that should launch in April. IRIS will watch the sun’s corona and heliosphere to better understand how solar flares and activity occur.

Next is the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which will set off for the moon in August, studying the extremely tenuous lunar atmosphere and what impact it might have on any astronauts at some future moonbase. Finally, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) is set to launch in November and begin probing Mars’ atmosphere in 2014, determining exactly how the Red Planet lost its water and whether or not it still has any methane, a potential sign of Martian life.

Image: MAVEN in orbit around Mars. NASA/GSFC

Studying the Earth

How much do you love images of Earth from space? Most of these beautiful shots would not be possible without NASA, NOAA, and the USGS’s Landsat program. Landsat is set to get its latest long-awaited Earth-observing satellite this year, with a launch date scheduled for February.

The Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) will provide scientists with tons of useful data on agriculture, weather, and human impact on the Earth. It should provide the rest of us with even more amazing images. LCDM will be joined this year by the European Space Agency’s wind-observing Aeolus satellite to help our beleaguered Earth-observing programs.

Image: An image of Tahiti from Landsat 7. NASA/USGS

NASA’s Existential Crisis

When you really get down to it, NASA is a Cold War relic. The agency was created with the purpose of beating the Soviets, first to orbit and then to the moon. In the former category, NASA lost, but the latter race is one of its most spectacular successes.

With the Cold War dead for more than 20 years, NASA has wandered along in search of a purpose, and next year seems like it will be no different than the last. Recently, the National Research Council offered its assessment of the agency, saying that NASA had no overall strategy or consensus on what it should be doing.

The agency is torn between many ideas: go to an asteroid like the president said, build a deep-space habitat around the moon, or finally get in gear to send people to Mars. Each plan has its pluses and minuses and no one seems to agree on the best. Add to this the fact that Congress isn’t thrilled about giving NASA any more money, and it seems like the agency will continue to drift.

Image: One concept for a manned mission to an asteroid, a possible place for NASA to send its astronauts in the coming decades. NASA/AMA, Inc.

Solar and Lunar Eclipses

There is nothing so regular as the dance of the sun and moon in space. This year, we will be treated to several celestial events, two solar eclipses and three lunar ones. On April 25, the moon will slip into the Earth’s shadow partway, creating a partial lunar eclipse. May will see two eclipse events, first an annular solar eclipse that will be seen on May 10 from Australia, eastern Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Gilbert Islands. Later in the month, on the 25th, the moon will fall into the Earth’s greater shadow, creating a penumbral lunar eclipse that will dim its light slightly but not produce the dramatic red color of a normal lunar eclipse.

Another penumbral lunar eclipse is slated for Oct. 18, creating a dusky shading on the southern half of the moon. Finally, Nov. 3 will have the most dramatic eclipse of the year. A total solar eclipse will begin briefly on the North American east coast and then travel over the Atlantic, cutting through the central part of Africa. This event will be a rare hybrid eclipse, where some places in the world will witness an annular solar eclipse, where the moon will leave a small ring of the sun visible.

Image: Phases of a solar eclipse, with the moon taking successively larger and larger bites from the sun. The final image is an annular eclipse, where the moon leaves a small ring of the sun visible. Brocken Inaglory/Wikimedia

Rise of Private Space

NASA may be in disarray but the U.S. commercial space sector has lately been having a good time. Most importantly are the successes of SpaceX, which launched its Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station twice in 2012. This year, SpaceX intends to work on bolder plans, with the first tests of its gigantic Falcon Heavy rocket slated for late 2013. Falcon Heavy has more than double the capacity of any existing launch vehicle and SpaceX claims it will deliver it for much cheaper than current systems.

Other commercial space events to look out for in 2013 include the potential launch of Orbital Sciences Cygnus resupply craft, an unmanned vehicle that could deliver necessities to the ISS. Virgin Galacticalso hopes to conduct much-needed tests on SpaceShipTwo, which is intended to carry tourists to the edge of space sometime in the next few years. Finally, teams in the Google Lunar X-Prize competition will be duking it out to see if any of them have the money and technical readiness to land a rover on the moon by 2015.

Image: SpaceX’s enormous Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. SpaceX

Activity in the Sun

This year marks the peak of the 11-year solar cycle, when the sun is expected to produce many more sunspots, flares, and mass ejections than usual. Space watchers can assume that our sun-monitoring satellites will see some incredible explosions from the sun’s surface, which will likely coincide with brilliant aurora over the Earth’s poles. But the activity will likely be muted: The current solar cycle is considered to be the weakest of any in the last 100 years.

Image: Prediction for the number of sunspots during the solar cycle peak in 2013. Hathaway/NASA/MSFC

India and China in Space

The countries whose economies will soon dominate the global scene will be making great strides in space this year. China will attempt its first ever soft landing on the moon, when its Chang’e 3 satellite sets down, perhaps in late 2013. It will also continue its manned space program, intending to launch a human crew and Tiangong-2, its next space station, which will bring it one step closer to completing an orbiting space laboratory in 2020.

India is setting its sights on Mars, launching a satellite in 2013 to enter Martian orbit and study the planet’s climate and history. The country will also launch its first satellite dedicated to astronomy research this year, Astrosat, which will monitor the sky in X-ray wavelengths for stellar and cosmic phenomena.