Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • [♪ INTRO]

  • It takes a lot of planning to get to space,

  • and millions or billions of dollars invested over years, if not decades.

  • So when the big day finally comes to launch a new mission,

  • it's some pretty important news.

  • Here are three missions to look forward to this year,

  • if everything goes according to plan.

  • Every two years, Earth and Mars line up in such a way that makes it easiest to get to Mars.

  • So this year, we're gonna be seeing a bunch of missions

  • beginning a half-year journey to the Red Planet.

  • NASA's still-unnamed 2020 rover has gotten most of the spotlight,

  • but it's not the only Mars mission on the block.

  • The United Arab Emirates is sending an orbiter,

  • and China is sending three separate spacecraft all at the same time.

  • But for this segment, we're gonna focus on

  • a joint mission by the European and Russian Space Agencies.

  • They're working on a rover to look for signs of life in Mars's crust.

  • And they've named their robot after

  • the woman who gave us the first images of DNA: Rosalind Franklin.

  • The Rosalind Franklin rover is part of the ESA's ongoing ExoMars mission,

  • which has been studying Mars's thin atmosphere

  • for signs of biological or geological activity since 2016.

  • Rosalind Franklin will be searching for signs of life on the ground, though.

  • It'll launch this summer and, if all goes well, will touch down in March of 2021.

  • Its destination is a Martian plain called Oxia Planum, near the planet's equator.

  • There, former water channels connect Mars's southern highlands and northern lowlands.

  • Those channels are covered by lava from ancient volcanoes,

  • which protected the matter under it from solar radiation and erosion.

  • And that's exciting, because if there were ever organic compounds there,

  • it's possible they were never broken down.

  • In other words, it's possible there are still organic compounds there.

  • That's a lot of maybes, of course, but we won't know unless we look.

  • To hunt for the remnants of life,

  • the rover has a drill that can probe two whole meters into Mars's crust,

  • as well as onboard instruments for analyzing soil samples.

  • Meanwhile, the Russian-made platform that will deliver the rover will stay put,

  • photographing the landing site, and monitoring the local atmosphere and climate.

  • Of course, before this duo makes the journey, the humans behind the mission

  • have to work out some problems with the parachutes that will slow it down for landing.

  • It'll take two large parachutes to slow down this heavy load in Mars's thin atmosphere,

  • but during tests on Earth, those parachutes have been tearing.

  • Engineers will need to get those chutes right to keep Rosalind on target for its 2020 launch.

  • So everybody, cross your fingers!

  • Engineers are also racing to complete new technology for getting humans into space.

  • Since 2011, NASA has had to buy seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft

  • to send its astronauts to the International Space Station.

  • But that's not the most practical arrangement, so back in 2010,

  • the agency paired with private companies in the U.S.

  • to develop at least one new craft capable of delivering humans to space.

  • Now, it's down to just three projects:

  • NASA's Orion, SpaceX's Crew Dragon, and Boeing's Starliner.

  • It is now a race to see which one will be the first to test a crewed launch.

  • It probably will not be Orion, whose crewed and uncrewed trips are currently facing delays.

  • But the other teams are doing okay.

  • The cargo version of SpaceX's Dragon has been delivering supplies to the ISS since 2012.

  • And this March, a version of Dragon

  • capable of supporting human passengers actually went to space.

  • Unfortunately, though, a month after that test,

  • the Crew Dragon exploded on the launchpad while SpaceX was testing its thrusters.

  • The accident also blew up the company's plans

  • of testing a crewed launch by the end of last year.

  • But the company has been hard at work since then.

  • And if things continue to go well,

  • plans are back on track to send a crew into space this year.

  • Meanwhile, Boeing's a little further behind in the testing phase;

  • their first uncrewed flight just went up last month.

  • Their capsule, called the CST-100 Starliner, claims to be reusable up to ten times.

  • And unlike Crew Dragon and NASA's previous crewed capsules,

  • Starliner is designed to land, like, on the land. Not in the ocean.

  • So in addition to the parachutes that slow its descent, it's got a bottom full of airbags.

  • As of this past November, neither SpaceX nor Boeing had met the safety standards

  • for transporting astronauts, so there are still some hurdles to get past.

  • But both companies are aiming to get the green light by this summer.

  • Finally, our third highlight for this year

  • has already arrived at the launch facility at Cape Canaveral.

  • It's the ESA's Solar Orbiter,

  • and it has to pass just a few final tests before it blasts off in February.

  • Over several years, this satellite will enter a highly tilted orbit around our star.

  • It will give us views of our Sun that we've never seen before,

  • like for the first time, we'll be able to see its north and south poles!

  • It might not look that different from the rest of the Sun,

  • but there's a lot of interesting physics happening up there.

  • For example, scientists are hoping to look at the magnetic field lines

  • around the poles to figure out how the Sun makes its magnetic field.

  • The Solar Orbiter will also study the Sun's heliosphere:

  • a bubble shaped like a windsock that's filled with plasma from the Sun

  • and extends beyond all our solar system's planets.

  • It won't get as close to the Sun as NASA's Parker Solar Probe, but it has more instruments,

  • so the two spacecraft will team up to tell us as much about our star as they can.

  • We'll have to wait a few years before any results come in,

  • but once we do start getting data, we'll have a lot of new science to look forward to.

  • And while there's a lot of exciting stuff happening this year,

  • both locally and in interplanetary space, the things we learn from these missions

  • will give us material for years and years of research and discoveries.

  • Thank you for watching this episode of SciShow Space!

  • And a special thanks to our patrons on Patreon, who make episodes like this possible.

  • If you like what we do and want to help make science education free for everybody on the internet,

  • find out how you can become part of our patron community at patreon.com/SciShow.

  • [♪ OUTRO]

[♪ INTRO]

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it