SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket takes off from Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 28, 2023. (Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
(Tribune News Service) — The moon is a big target for space launches in 2024, with NASA aiming to return the first humans in more than 50 years for a fly-by on the Artemis II mission while spate of commercial companies are lined up for their lunar landers’ shot to touch down safely.
It’s one big theme of the lineup of what could be yet another record year for launches on the Space Coast. Another is the introduction of new spacecraft to the manifest with both the first-ever crewed Boeing CST-100 Starliner and the first-ever uncrewed flight of the Sierra Space Dream Chaser on tap.
And it’s a year that should see the introduction of a new heavy lift rocket from United Launch Alliance and and maybe even one from Blue Origin, plus more private and NASA human spaceflight and one big science mission to an icy moon of Jupiter.
Artemis II: NASA’s target for the first crewed mission of the Orion capsule atop the Space Launch System rocket remains November, but could slip into 2025. But the crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch with Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen will continue to prep while the pieces of the SLS make their way to Kennedy Space Center to be stacked in the Vehicle Assembly Building.
The mission, which would launch from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-B, is set to prove Orion can support humans safely on a trip to the moon and back following up on the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission from late 2021. It also will pave the way for Artemis III, which is still on the roadmap with an optimistic target of December 2025, which aims to return humans including the first woman to walk on the moon for the first time since 1972.
While delays in SpaceX’s Starship, which will be used as the human landing system, and new spacesuits could force Artemis III to push deeper into the decade, Artemis II remains mostly on target for its eight-day trip, and would mark the return of humans beyond low-Earth orbit.
Vulcan Centaur and Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander: United Launch Alliance has seen a spate of delays getting to the first launch of its new heavy lift rocket, a replacement for ULA’s Atlas V and Delta IV family of rockets. The Certification-1 mission, though, is set for liftoff as early as Jan. 8 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 41. ULA has big plans with dozens of commercial and military contracts to satisfy and needs to knock out two certification flights before it can fly missions for the Department of Defense.
Cert-1’s primary payload is also a groundbreaking flight, the first of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS) contracts to launch. The Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lunar lander is targeting a moon touchdown as early as Feb. 23. The Centaur upper stage is also carrying for Celestis Inc., the remains and DNA of hundreds of deceased, and even a few living, passengers including “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry and actors James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols and DeForest Kelley. Plans are to send the stage to a permanent deep space location so it becomes Enterprise Statiion.
Other CLPS missions: More moonbound missions are on the calendar including Houston-based Intuitive Machines with its Nova-C lander on the IM-1 mission flying on a SpaceX Falcon 9 as early as February. NASA also expects both Astrobotic’s and Intuitive Machines’ second missions before the end of 2024. Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander is targeting a November flight atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy bringing with it NASA’s Artemis lunar rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, which will explore the moon for ice and other resources at the south pole.
Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission flying on a Falcon 9 would send a second Nova-C lander featuring NASA’s PRIME-1 drill to the south pole to demonstrate what NASA calls in-situ resource utilization and measure samples. That flight will also bring the Lunar Trailblazer small satellite to hunt for more water on the moon. NASA has a third CLPS provider, Cedar Park, Texas-based Firefly, slated to send its Blue Ghost lander to the moon in 2024, but the launch provider has yet to be announced.
Boeing CST-100 Starliner: Another long-delayed mission is the first crewed flight of Boeing’s offering alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, contracted to provide astronauts taxi service to the International Space Station as a replacement to the Space Shuttle Program. Starliner’s original attempt at an uncrewed flight in 2019 wasn’t able to rendezvous with the ISS, which led to a series of required fixes and a second uncrewed flight.
That, too, faced more delays, and while SpaceX first flew with a demonstration crew in May 2020, Boeing is now aiming to achieve the same feat but nearly four years later with a launch atop a ULA Atlas V rocket from Canaveral’s SLC-41 in mid-April. Dubbed the Crew Flight Test (CFT), Starliner aims to carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on an eight-day mission to the ISS followed by a parachute-and-airbag-assisted ground landing in the desert of the western United States. If all goes well, it will pave the way for Starliner to share duties for crew rotation with SpaceX, which has since 2020 already sent up seven operational crews for six-month stays on the ISS.
More human spaceflight: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon has a busy year planned with two more private missions with Axiom Space to the ISS, two more crew rotations for NASA and the orbital private mission Polaris Dawn that will feature billionaire Jared Issacman’s return to space after flying on the Inspiration4 mission in 2021. First up in mid-January is Axiom 3 followed by Crew-8 in mid-February. Polaris Dawn, which will see two of its four crew attempt a tethered spacewalk, is now aiming for summer, while Crew-9 is expected in August and Axiom 4 in October. With the flights of Orion on Artemis II and Starliner, the year could see 26 humans headed to space from Florida, the most since the Space Shuttle Program sent up 35 in 2009.
Sierra Space Dream Chaser: While not yet ready for humans, NASA did open up its ISS cargo supply contract to a third provider beyond SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft. The Dream Chaser looks like a little space shuttle, and will land at the former space shuttle landing facility at KSC once its mission is complete, something unique for NASA as Dragons land at sea and Cygnus capsules burn up on reentry. The first flight is ULA’s Certification-2 mission, aiming to launch before summer on the second flight of Vulcan Centaur. Sierra Space has plans to expand the Dream Chaser program to eventually support human spaceflight. For now, it will add to the bevy of spacecraft that can dock to the ISS.
Speaking of Cygnus: Because Northrop Grumman is out of parts to support flights of its Antares rockets because of Russian and Ukraine suppliers, SpaceX is taking over at least the next two cargo resupply missions for Cygnus to the ISS. So instead of launching from Virginia, the cargo craft will take off from the Space Coast atop Falcon 9 rockets. The first one is slated to go up as early as Jan. 29.
Europa Clipper and other science missions: NASA’s big science mission for 2024 is headed for Jupiter moon Europa. Set to launch on a Falcon Heavy from KSC in October, the probe will travel 1.8 billion miles to hunt below the surface of the icy moon to see if it could support life. One other science satellite launch coming up as soon as February 6 is NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite aiming to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9. PACE is concerned with ocean health by measuring the Earth’s spread of phytoplankton, algae and other tiny plants that are the basis of the marine food web.
SpaceX vs. ULA: SpaceX had the lion’s share of the Space Coast’s record 72 launches in 2023 with more than half of those dedicated to building out SpaceX’s growing Starlink satellite constellation. Plans are to speed up the pace to support as many as two launches per week between KSC and Cape Canaveral. Meanwhile, ULA, which only flew three times in 2023, is gearing up so that by 2025 its Vulcan Centaur and remaining Atlas V rockets will lead to at least a twice monthly cadence. The combination of the two companies’ pace mean the Space Coast could be hitting more than 100 launches by the end of 2024.
Final Delta IV Heavy: One rocket that won’t be launching beyond 2024 is ULA’s Delta IV Heavy. The final rocket is slated to launch on a mission for the Space Force sometime in the summer after the penultimate launch this past summer from Space Launch Complex 37B, which will be shut down after the final mission. ULA won’t run out of Atlas V rockets for another five years, although all 17 of its remaining stable have been purchased, including eight for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a competitor to Starlink, which has another 38 launches lined up on Vulcan Centaur.
No small rocket action, for now: The Space Coast saw small rocket company Astra Space fly twice from Cape Canaveral in 2022, and Relativity Space’s 3D-printed Terran 1 rocket once in 2023, but neither company is expected back in 2024. Other small rocket companies like ABL Space Systems, Firefly and Rocket Lab may continue to find orbital success, but for now they’re flying from launch pads outside of Florida.
Blue Origin New Glenn: One new rocket that company founder Jeff Bezos insists may still come in 2024 is the heavy lift New Glenn rocket for Blue Origin. Bezos’ company provides ULA with two BE-4 engines for each Vulcan Centaur, but New Glenn needs seven. The company has been ramping up engine production, so it could be that the combination of successful Vulcan Centaur flights in early 2024 may lead to enough engines in place to support the massive rocket that would launch from Canaveral’s Launch Complex 36.
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