The largest and most powerful space telescope in human history, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), recently confirmed ice in an interstellar cloud 630 light-years away from Earth. Found in one of the coldest and darkest regions of the universe, this ice has been analyzed to exist at the lowest temperature ever found in space. Ice molecules in interstellar clouds are an important research object for elucidating the process of star formation. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also unveiled the blueprint for the next-generation space telescope, the Habitable World Observatory (HWO), following the JWST. Including this, we introduce new exploration missions that will take place in space in 2023.
△European Space Agency launches Jupiter’s satellite probe
The European Space Agency (ESA) will launch Jupiter’s icy moon probe ‘JUICE’ in April. After eight years, it is scheduled to arrive in Jupiter’s orbit in 2031. After that, three of Jupiter’s four major moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, will be explored for two and a half years. This is the first space exploration targeting a satellite that is not a planet in the solar system. Scientists estimate that beneath the satellite’s ice lies a 100-kilometer-thick ocean that is suitable for life.
△Japan attempts to land on the moon for the fourth time in the world
The ‘Hakuto-R’ Mission 1 lander launched by the Japanese space company ‘Ispace’ in December of last year will also attempt to land on the moon in April. With a height of 2.3 m, a width of 2.6 m, and a weight of 340 kg, ‘Mission 1’ is Japan’s first lunar lander. The United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s 10kg ultra-small rover ‘Rashid’ and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency jointly developed a ball-shaped transforming robot with toy company ‘Tommy’ collided with Atlas at the edge of the ‘Sea of Ice’ in the northeast of the lunar face. will be placed in the basin. If this plan succeeds, Japan will become the fourth country in the world to successfully land on the moon.
Meanwhile, the American space company ‘Intuitive Machine’ is on a mission to launch a ‘Nova-C’ spacecraft to transport cargo to the lunar surface using a SpaceX rocket during March to May.
△Europe launches Euclid space telescope to explore dark energy
The European Space Agency launches the ‘Euclidean Telescope’ to focus on 2 billion galaxies and surrounding dark matter in a third of the sky in September. It is a space telescope consisting of a mirror with a diameter of 1.2 m. It observes distant galaxies in the visible and infrared regions for 6 years. If all of Euclid’s observations proceed as scheduled, the largest 3D map of the universe with accurate location information of over 10 billion galaxies will be completed.
China is also launching a space telescope called ‘Shuntian’, which will be deployed around the space station Tiangong at the end of this year. Observe the universe more precisely than the Hubble Space Telescope through visible light and ultraviolet light.
△Asteroid Benu sample arrives at Earth
On September 24, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft brings rock samples from the 500-meter-tall asteroid Bennu back to Earth. The probe departed for Earth in May of last year with hundreds of grams of samples collected from Benu in October 2020. Astronomers analyze asteroid fragments to determine how much water they contain. In October, NASA launches the asteroid Psyche 16 probe ‘Psyche’, orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. Psyche is an asteroid that is said to be a candidate for resource mining because it is rich in metal minerals such as nickel and iron. It will arrive in Psyche in 2029 and orbit around it for 21 months to analyze its composition and origin.
NASA unveils plans for next-generation space telescope
JWST photographed a star cluster formed 10 billion years ago last year, and successfully observed the first Earth-sized exoplanet and seven Earth-like planets. NASA recently unveiled the blueprint for the Habitable World Observatory (HWO), the successor to the JWST. Its main mission is to find traces of life on an alien planet resembling Earth in 2040, heading for the ‘Second Lagrange Point’, which is about 1.5 million km away from Earth. For this, the same mirrors used for JWST are needed for HWO. The JWST picks up radio signals from celestial events with 18 hexagonal beryllium mirrors. HWO requires more stringent mirror control technology than JWST.
Send SNS articles