2015 was the year we saw Pluto and found water on Mars.
In 2016, we’re going to learn just how the planets were made.
Hello, everyone and happy new year!
Amy with you on DNews today looking ahead at what to expect in space this year.
There’s a lot going on!
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars rover will land on Mars, Osiris-REX will launch
towards the asteroid, and Rosetta will smash into comet 67P.
But two upcoming missions really stand out to me.
One is called InSight--
Oh my gosh you guys, Amy shot this video before leaving for the holidays and on December 22,
NASA postponed the InSight mission, 26 months until 2018.
So!
I'm subbing in really quick with a mission that didn't make the cut before!
JAXA -- the Japanese Space Agency, is launching a x-ray astronomy telescope ASTRO-H in February
of next year.
X-Rays are produced when cosmic matter is heated to millions of degrees.
We physically cannot observe those emission with surface telescopes because, to x-rays,
the Earth’s atmosphere is OPAQUE!
By looking at them from space, we can pick up tons of data impossible to gather from
Earth.
To pick up as much as possible, the satellite has four sensor systems allowing it to measure
hard and soft x-rays, gamma rays and perform x-ray spectroscopy.
Once launched from Japan, the ASTRO-H will open up "windows into the distribution of
dark matter in galaxies," and the "the large-scale structure of the Universe."
Very cool.
Okay, back to Amy!!
Sorry about InSight--
Another mission this year is going to look into the solar system’s formation as a whole
by looking at Jupiter.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft will arrive at the Jovian system on July 5, and like another
Mars mission, it might seem like we know plenty about the largest planet.
We've been to Jupiter a lot, but most of those missions have been flybys on the way to other
destinations — the Pioneer probes, the Voyager probes, New Horizons, Cassini, and Ulysses
all flew past Jupiter without stopping.
Galileo went into orbit around the gas giant from 1995 to 2003, and we haven't had anything
in orbit since.
We're long overdue for a dedicated Jupiter mission, particularly one that will measure
something we don't know about: the amount of water in Jupiter's atmosphere.
This seems esoteric, but it’s actually going to help scientists with the major question
of which planet formation theory is correct, or tell us if we need an entirely new theory
by telling us where the water on Earth came from.
If Juno finds there's little water in Jupiter’s atmosphere, scientists will be able to conclude
that icy bodies like asteroids from the distant Kuiper Belt brought water as ice to the rocky
inner planets.
And because Jupiter is our best example of a giant planet, knowing more about its formation
will help us understand the planets we find around other stars.
There are so many exciting missions going on right now, but if you’re like me and
have a soft spot of missions of yesteryear, like NASA’s 1960s plan to send astronauts
to Venus, come dive into space history with me on my own channel, Vintage Space.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAW5i6ZWv8
We’ll have a link to that video in the description.
So InSight and Juno are the missions that *I'm* into, but what missions are you guys
looking forward to this year?
Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to subscribe for more DNews every day
of the week.
What missions are you guys looking forward to this year?
Let us know in the comments below and keep coming back to Test Tube for more DNews every
single day of the week.
What missions are you guys looking forward to this year?
Let us know on the Discovery News Facebook page or on Twitter @DNews.
And you can find me; I’m @astvintagespace.
Thanks for watching!