To the Moon, Mars, and Beyond
First is the Europa Clipper mission. In this, a spacecraft will go around one of Jupiter’s biggest moons Europa. Europa is pretty special. It’s a bit smaller than our own Moon and is covered in ice.
But the exciting part is that scientists think there’s a giant ocean hidden under that ice, with more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined! The spacecraft will fly around Europa nearly 50 times to study its icy surface and see if this ocean could be home to alien life.
Next, we have Artemis II. This mission is sending astronauts to orbit the Moon, and it’s the first time we’re doing this since 1972. What’s even more exciting is that this mission will include the first woman and the first person of color to go to the Moon.
Then, there’s VIPER to explore the Moon’s south pole. VIPER’s mission is to hunt for water. Finding water on the Moon is a huge deal because it could help future astronauts survive up there.
Another cool mission is the JAXA MMX, which is all about studying Mars’ moons, Phobos and Deimos. The big question is: how did these moons get there? MMX is going to hang out around Mars for three years, even landing on Phobos to collect a sample to bring back to Earth.
Lastly, there’s the ESA’s Hera mission to return the pair of asteroids Didymos and, Dimorphos. There is a story here. In the past NASA’s DART mission visited these asteroids and hit it with such force that it actually changed its path or we can say orbit forever. Now This new Hera mission will examine what happened after this crash.
This could be helpful if we ever discover something dangerous flying towards Earth and need to change its path.
It will tell us how much a spacecraft’s impact can defect an asteroid in its orbit. A test to protect the future of our planet.