Come, come and see. What the European Space Agency has in store for thee.
Launchers, science, Earth observation, and so much more.
All of this you get to see in 2024.
2024: Year of the launchers
As 2024 kicks into gear, we invite you to look ahead with ESA and see what marvels await us in the coming 12 months.
2024 will likely be remembered as the year of the launchers.
After the Ariane 5 retirement in 2023,
Europe’s new and versatile heavy duty launcher Ariane 6 will continue the Ariane legacy of excellence and reliability.
After years of development and construction Ariane 6 will be ready for its first flight from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou.
A pinnacle of European collaboration and ingenuity.
In 2024, ESA and European industry will work towards a launch of Vega-C with new components.
Learning from the past is a path which leads to excellence,
and Vega-C will continue to provide Europe with its own affordable lightweight launcher.
Together with Ariane 6 both projects guarantee Europe’s independent access to space.
Although this independence is crucial for Europe,
ESA also continues to collaborate internationally with partners like NASA on their Artemis programme.
This spring another European Service Module,
or ESM-3, for the third Artemis mission will be shipped to the US for mating with its Orion capsule.
In 2024, ESA will also launch Proba-3, the first precision formation-flying mission ever.
The Coronagraph and Occulter spacecraft will fly together forming a 144-metre Coronagraph
studying the Sun’s corona closer to the solar rim than ever before, a win for scientific research.
But scientists have more to rejoice about because early in the year
the first scientific data gathered by ESA’s latest space telescope, Euclid, will be revealed.
Euclid was designed to explore the composition and evolution of dark matter and dark energy.
It will create a map of the large-scale structure of the Universe by observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years.
With such dazzling numbers and observations on a scale which has never been seen before,
Euclid’s data is sure to blow our minds.
Another exciting milestone in 2024 is ESA’s Hera mission that is set for launch in October.
This mission will fly to the binary asteroid system of Dimorphos and Didymos,
to observe the aftermath of the impact made by NASA’s Dart-mission.
With Dart, NASA demonstrated mankind could change the orbit of an asteroid like Dimorphos.
A test to see if a similar mission could one day be used to protect our planet from an asteroid on a collision course.
In Earth Observation a whole host of satellites are ready to be launched.
For ESA, monitoring our planet from space is a crucial assignment,
and the plethora of satellites ready to observe Earth from space is testament to this.
The ESA and JAXA mission EarthCARE, or Earth Cloud Aerosol and Radiation Explorer satellite mission,
will advance our understanding of the role that clouds and aerosols play in reflecting incident solar radiation
back out to space and trapping infrared radiation emitted from Earth’s surface.
Whereas the Arctic Weather Satellite mission will provide frequent coverage of Earth
for improved nowcasting and numerical weather prediction.
ESA also continues to support the European Union’s Copernicus programme
with the launch of Sentinel-1C and Sentinel-2C satellites,
while more Copernicus expansion missions are being developed.
2024 will bring new developments as well for Galileo,
the world's most precise satellite navigation system
now serving more than three billion users around the globe.
Two more first-generation satellites are to be launched in April, to provide redundancy,
followed by two more later in the year.
These will further expand the constellation and help guarantee Galileo’s optimal performance.
Meanwhile the first hardware deliveries will take place for the 2nd generation Galileo satellites and their development is in full swing.
This new generation will enhance the Galileo navigation technology making for an ever more accurate and performant system.
A year in space cannot be complete without some exciting updates about the European Astronaut corps.
In February, Danish ESA Astronaut Andreas Mogensen is due to return to Earth
after a six month stay on the international Space Station.
In 2024, ESA’s 5 career astronauts from the 2022 Astronaut class will finish their basic training.
Going forward they will have to wait for their mission assignments
and one day travel into space in search of scientific knowledge,
pushing the limits of humankinds ingenuity.
For Swedish Reserve astronaut Marcus Wandt, there is no such wait,
because at the beginning of 2024 he flies to the ISS as a mission specialist on the Muninn Mission.
As you can see
the European Space Agency offers a lot to thee.
Excitement, adventure and so much more
in the year 2024.