2019 in space

2018 has been a record-shattering year -with more than 100 successful launches and mission achievements. What are we looking for in 2019? Another year that promises to be spectacular, as a matter of fact.

It started with a bang, with New Horizons’ flyby of Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt and China’s Chang’e 4 rover exploring the Moon’s Far Side (two firsts in the history of space exploration).

More is coming.

Mars InSight lander, which landed just last December on the Red Planet, will start drilling deep beneath the surface of Mars to unlock the secrets of the Solar System’s rocky planets. Another ongoing mission, Juno, is scheduled to flyby five times around Jupiter during the year.

2019 is also the year when the US will (if all go according to plan) be back in the game of shipping astronauts to the ISS, thing it stopped to do in 2011 with the demise of the Space Shuttles. Nasa has been working with Boeing and SpaceX for a while to develop spacecraft that can, and this year is when we will finally see manned flights taking off the US soil.

On the other side of the Atlantic, ESA will launch Cheops, another space telescope -like Kepler, a planet hunter, to find out more about planets outside of our solar system.

Impossible not to get excited for all these things going on. And with good reasons: 2019 will be the 50th anniversary of the man on the lunar soil, and needs to be properly celebrated. Get ready!

5 Comments

  1. sjhigbee

    Thank you for this round-up – it just goes on getting more exciting…:)

    Reply
    1. Steph P. Bianchini (Post author)

      It is. This year promises to be stellar 😀

      Reply
      1. sjhigbee

        It certainly does, doesn’t it?

        Reply
  2. maddalena@spaceandsorcery

    With this important anniversary approaching, my hope is that the interest for the Moon could be revived is high: after all it’s a good location for humanity’s first base outside of the Earth – or am I dreaming impossible dreams? 🙂
    Thanks for sharing!

    Reply
    1. Steph P. Bianchini (Post author)

      Oh well, there are a few ongoing projects for a Moon station -I’ll write about them in a while. But yes, I think you’re not dreaming 🙂

      Reply

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