Nothing personal, but I need a little space.
So you’re getting subjected to a special post today about some of the bright spots of 2020. Yeah, go ahead and read that again – there are some bright spots! Take a moment to look up, literally.
Mars or Bust
Summer 2020 brought us an optimal launch window for missions to Mars. And while we are still some time away from a human mission to Mars, our little robot friends are going to be very active come February 2021. Three separate missions launched during the July 2020 window and are all expected to reach their ultimate destination in a few months.
This year, NASA launched the Mars 2020 mission. The flight included the Perseverance rover and a first-of-its-kind helicopter, dubbed Ingenuity, designed for the thin atmosphere of the red planet. This team will work to collect samples that, for the first time, will be stored with the express purpose of eventual return to Earth via a separate mission.
But we aren’t the only nation headed to Mars in 2020. Both China and the United Arab Emirates are en route. China’s Tianwen-1 includes an orbiter, lander and rover utilizing a homebuilt delivery vehicle (their first). The UAE hitched a ride on a Japanese orbital launch to send their Hope orbiter to study seasonal patterns.
Rovers and probes lack the romanticism of human space flight – but each of these missions is helping us grow our knowledge base as we stretch further into the solar system in the coming generations. Perseverance’s sample collecting mission is a clarion call to American politicians to support future missions – especially crewed missions – in a way that builds on the successful advances we’ve seen through commercial endeavors and NASA’s re-prioritization of missions beyond Low-Earth Orbit (LEO).
Human Missions
But LEO is where we are still thriving in research and development – and this year’s activity on the International Space Station (ISS) has not disappointed. If you’re like me, you spent an entire day glued to the television when SpaceX launched Demo Mission 1 (Demo-1) earlier this year – the first time a private company has launched astronauts to the ISS and returned them safely to Earth. Accomplishing what many thought would never. be done, a private company returned human space flight to American soil for the first time since the end of the Shuttle program in 2011.
If you’re not like me, and you didn’t spend that entire day celebrating the free market in action, here’s a peek at my daughter celebrating the occasion in style:
Since Demo-1, the US and Russia have exchanged crew members on the ISS via the Russian Soyuz space craft, allowing Expedition Crew 64 to extend the continuity of human presence in orbit. On November 2nd, this crew will pass the 20 year mark for consecutive human presence in space. The station, significantly outlasting its planned lifespan, continues to grow our understanding of what it will take to live and work in space long term (ahem, Mars missions).
Rocket Development
But we won’t get to pack our bags for Mars quite yet – just give it about 10 years. Does that seem aggressive? Not if you ask the folks at SpaceX.
The Hawthorne, CA based company is continuing a rapid development of Starship, its next generation of reusable orbital craft that will more than quadruple the cargo capacity of the reliable Falcon 9. The Falcon series just completed its 100th successful launch since 2008. Twelve years into orbital flights and SpaceX has almost caught up to the total launches of the shuttle program (135 over 30 years). Starship will be a significant leap forward because it will dramatically increase supplies available to future missions to the Moon and Mars.
If this isn’t getting you excited, let’s talk about the NASA/SpaceX partnership moving forward. It boils down to contracts that are the natural evolution from the commercial resupply program launched by NASA and brought to reality in the past decade. SpaceX will be providing logistical support to the Artemis program, NASA’s renewed push for providing a longterm footprint on and around the moon including Gateway. This orbiting station will allow for long duration lunar orbit missions and landing capability for extended science operations on the lunar surface (AWESOME).
So what will SpaceX’s role be? First, reusable launch capability through the Falcon and Starship platforms. Through reusability, SpaceX has dramatically reduced launch expenses. Secondly, they are building a Starship concept vehicle that will allow Starship to serve as a refueling platform for missions to the Moon and Mars. Finally, they’ve been awarded contracts to provide logistics support (transportation to lunar orbit) and a human lander concept (Starship) as part of the Artemis program.
Artemis is our next stepping stone into the deeper solar system. And while I could go on, and on, and on about everything that’s exciting me about spaceflight, it’s time I let you return to Earth.
2020 continues to pose challenges for all of us. But, we sell ourselves short when we fail to recognize the good happening all around us. Much like the days of the Apollo program, our generation is poised to witness something remarkable in the coming years. Our universe is about to get smaller. I’m hoping my daughter will continue to glance upwards to the stars like she’s starting to these days. If nothing else, it will give years like 2020 a bit of perspective.
In the grand scheme of things, we’ve barely stretched our legs in human spaceflight. It’s difficult to capture mentally just how monumental a human mission to Mars would be. But let’s put it on the same scale as Columbus landing in the Caribbean. By that scale, where Mars represents San Salvador Island and Kennedy Space Center is Spain circa 1492, we’ve only sailed about 2.5 miles off the Spanish shore. We’re at the very start of this golden age of human exploration, don’t miss it, make sure to look up every once in a while.
Part of the Possible 