Space exploration continues to frustrate me ever since my Countdown poster (or was it Brooke Bond Tea Cards) promised Humans on Mars by 1980! But momentum does seem to be gathering again and 2020 looks like being a good year. Things I'm looking out for are:
- SpaceX's Starship making its 200km hop some time in Q2, and possibly even an uncrewed orbital flight by end 2020. That will be awesome as Starship seems to open up space in a way that SLS/Artemis totally fails to do.
- Crewed Dragon does its in-flight abort test some time this month hopefully, and then starts flying crew to ISS well before the end of the year.
- Boeing Starliner does its in-flight abort in Q1, and if it doesn't have to repeat its failed IS docking flight also gets crews to ISS by year end (and perhaps even if it does have to).
- Another crewed Chinese flight in preparation for their space station?
- India tests its Gaganyaan spacecraft in an uncrewed mode
- Nasa launches Mars2020 and ESA luanches ExoMars
- The UAE may launch to Mars, as may China
- China does a Moon sample-return and India re-attempts a moon landing.
- Virgin Galactic takes paying customers to the edge-of-space, and Blue Origin takes its first crews a little further,
- NASA CLPS progresses ready for the first two deliveries for NASA payloads to the Moon in July 2021.
- And SLS/Artemis may get EM1 on a circumlunar test flight (although latest rumour is that even this might now be pushed back to 2021!)
It still seems to me that SpaceX is going to just leave NASA standing when it comes to the Moon and Mars. Here's hoping they manage to do it safely!
