CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The Space Coast saw more launches in 2017 than ever before. In 2018, that number is expected to increase significantly, and at Kennedy Space Center, the commercial crew program is inching closer to human spaceflight from the U.S. again.
Actually launching something -- science experiments, a person's ashes and satellites -- to space is becoming increasingly more accessible. Next year, we’ll see it happen more often as existing commercial space companies continue to grow and new companies spring up.
The center will also see more missions departing from the Space Coast -- as many as 36 in 2018, which would surpass the 19 launches in 2017.
Robotic missions currently at Jupiter and Mars will continue to provide important data to planetary scientists to help answer important questions about the formation of our solar system and how life began.
Read on for a breakdown of what to look forward to in the new year in terms of launches, planetary exploration and the expanding commercial presence on the Space Coast.
Humans return to launching from U.S. soil again, hopefully
A crewed spacecraft has not been launched from American soil since 2011. After the final space shuttle launch, NASA has paid Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, to shuttle its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
NASA awarded contracts to commercial space companies Boeing and SpaceX in 2014 to develop spacecraft for the commercial crew program.
Both companies revealed spacesuits for their crafts in 2017 and completed critical testing.
Commercial crew astronauts could launch on a SpaceX Crew Dragon and Falcon 9 as soon as summer 2018. Boeing is targeting November to launch its Starliner spacecraft which will use a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
Delays are expected and both launches could be pushed into 2019.
Falcon Heavy maiden voyage with Musk’s sports car as its payload
After years of delays, SpaceX is planning to debut its new heavy lift rocket, the Falcon Heavy, from Kennedy Space Center's historic Launch Pad 39A in January.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently announced on Twitter that the rocket’s first payload will be his cherry red Tesla roadster and its destination will be Mars orbit.
The Falcon Heavy is designed to carry large payloads and the Dragon spacecraft. Heavy's first stage has three boosters and 27 engines, compared with Falcon 9's nine engines.
The rocket’s boosters will land, after launch, on SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral and at sea on a drone ship for later reuse.
Blue Origin opens new rocket assembly facility
Led by Amazon CEO and billionaire Jeff Bezos, commercial space company Blue Origin is putting down roots in Exploration Park with its New Glenn rocket manufacturing facility.
The New Glenn rocket factory just outside Kennedy Space Center, partially opened in December.
The blue-and-white, 750,000-square-foot facility is where the New Glenn rockets will be manufactured. Blue Origin is targeting 2020 for the first launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 36, which is leased from the Air Force.
More Jupiter discoveries and images
NASA’S Juno spacecraft continues to make flybys of Jupiter about every two months, capturing breathtaking photos of the gas giant’s storm systems and gathering new data from uncharted radiation zones.
In 2017, Juno helped answer questions about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the largest and most famous storm system in our solar system. A recent study published by some of Juno’s team members shows that the giant oval storm is possibly 100 times deeper than Earth’s oceans and warmer, too.
"One of the most basic questions about Jupiter's Great Red Spot is: How deep are the roots?" Juno's principal investigator, Scott Bolton, said in December. "Juno data indicate that the solar system's most famous storm is almost 1 1/2 Earths wide, and has roots that penetrate about 200 miles (300 kilometers) into the planet's atmosphere."
In 2018, as Juno continues to make passes about 2,100 miles above Jupiter’s clouds, we’ll continue to learn more about what is thought to be the first planet in our solar system.
Mars InSight launch
After a two-year delay, NASA plans to launch the Mars InSight lander, which will study the red planet’s interior.
InSight’s mission is to find out how terrestrial, or rocky, planets such as Mars formed, by studying them from the inside out, taking the planet's "pulse," or seismology, determining the size of the Martian core and finding out how thick the planet's crust is.
During a NASA campaign, more than 2.4 million people submitted their names to fly onboard InSight to Mars.
The lander is expected to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in May and arrive on the red planet in November.
Asteroid-chasing spacecraft catches up to Bennu
NASA’s first spacecraft designed to map and return a sample from an asteroid is still playing catch-up to its target, Bennu, but in 2018 the mission will get closer to its objective.
OSIRIS-REx stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security – Regolith Explorer, a name filled with expectations for the seven-year mission.
In September 2017, the spacecraft successfully completed an Earth gravity-assist flyby. Up next, OSIRIS-REx will make a deep space maneuver in June 2018 that will set up the spacecraft to approach Bennu by August. The spacecraft will have to perform breaking maneuvers to slow down and fly along with the asteroid moving at 63,000 mph where it will survey the object for a year before collecting a sample.
OSIRIS-Rex will begin using its science instruments in October to map the asteroid and find the candidate sample sites were it will collect a sample in 2019 with the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism or TAGSAM instrument to bring back to Earth.
UCF physics professors Humberto Campins and Yan Fernandez are part of the mission’s science team that will analyze the images taken of Bennu for clues about the 4.5 billion-year-old asteroid, essentially a fossil of our social system.
Science collected during the mission will help us learn how to deflect near Earth asteroids, like Bennu, that also has the potential to threaten Earth, but not for another 160 years.
Better weather prediction
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plan to launch the second in a series of four advanced technology weather satellites in March. GOES-16 was launched in November 2016 and, next year, NASA plans to launch GOES-S, which will become GOES-17 after it is operational.
The satellites are part of a $10 billion program to help improve forecasting of incoming weather hazards. These satellites will provide continuous imagery and atmospheric measurements of Earth’s Western Hemisphere, lightning data and space weather.
GOES-16 provided critical information to forecasters during the 2017 hurricane season with scans targeting areas of severe weather every 30 seconds.
#GOES16 captured imagery of #HurricaneMaria #HurricaneLee still dominating the northwest Atlantic. More images @ https://t.co/3xKSSaUCDl pic.twitter.com/k8s9jnMPDE
— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) September 27, 2017
“GOES-16 has proven to be one of the most important tools we’ve ever developed for our weather and hazard forecasts,” the acting NOAA administrator, retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, said. “From its impressive first image of Earth last January to monitoring tropical storms and wildfires, GOES-16 has and will continue to greatly improve our ability to visualize potential threats and enhance forecasts and warnings to save lives and protect property.”
The GOES-S launch will be followed by GOES-T in 2020 and GOES-U in 2024.
Virgin Orbit and Cosmic Girl
Virgin Orbit is a good example of growing accessibility to space. The sister space company to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic plans to debut its LauncherOne rocket in 2018 carrying payloads to low-Earth orbit.
Mission control will be based out of a retrofitted Hollywood movie trailer and the Virgin Orbit rocket, LauncherOne, will catch a ride on a Boeing 747-400 named Cosmic Girl. The plane can take off from any runway and then release LauncherOne at 35,000 feet, Cosmic Girl gets a healthy head start moving away before LauncherOne fires up into space.
“Our hope is to fly this vehicle quite often, 24 launches per year,” Virgin Orbit special projects Vice President Will Pomerantz told News 6. “We like to think we are not overly ambitious. You can buy five or six of our rockets for the price of some other rockets on the market.”
Competitively priced, customers can buy space on LauncherOne for their payloads, or the entire rocket. NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense and satellite company OneWeb are among the first customers with many more already lined up.
Virgin Orbit is targeting the first half of 2018 for its first launch.