2024 in spaceflight
2024 saw new world records for orbital launch attempts and successful orbital launches for the fourth consecutive year. Notable milestones included the successful maiden launches of the American Vulcan Centaur and China's Gravity-1, and Long March 12 rockets. The European Ariane 6 rocket also conducted its inaugural flight, though it experienced a partial failure. SpaceX advanced its Starship development, with flight test 5 achieving the first landing of its first stage. Additionally, the final launch of a Delta family rocket, a Delta IV Heavy variant, occurred in April.
In September, the private Polaris Dawn mission made history by performing the first commercial spacewalk, during which two crew members exited their Crew Dragon spacecraft. This mission set a new record for the number of individuals—four—simultaneously exposed to the vacuum of space.
Two significant scientific missions were launched in October: NASA's Europa Clipper to Jupiter's moon Europa to look for signs of an ocean under its icy surface and ESA's Hera to the Didymos binary asteroid system that was impacted four years earlier by the DART spacecraft to validate the kinetic impact method of redirecting an asteroid on a trajectory to collide with Earth. On Mars, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter concluded operations in January after completing 72 flights when its rotor blades sustained critical damage.
The year also featured notable lunar missions. CNSA's Chang'e 6 successfully completed the first-ever sample return mission from far side of the Moon. JAXA's SLIM and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 achieved soft landings on the lunar surface; however, both landers tipped over during their final descent, leading to the conclusion of their missions shortly thereafter. With SLIM, Japan became the fifth country to accomplish a soft landing on the Moon.
A record for the most people simultaneously in orbit was set on 11 September, with 19 individuals. This was achieved following the launch of the three-person Soyuz MS-26 mission to the International Space Station, joining the nine crew members already aboard the ISS, the three crew members of China's Tiangong space station, and the four crew members of Polaris Dawn.
Throughout the year, the ISS hosted long-duration Expedition 70, 71, and 72 missions, as well as two short-term missions: the four-person crew of the privately operated Axiom Mission 3 and the Russia's 21st Visiting Expedition. Meanwhile, Tiangong was visited by the long-term Shenzhou 18 and 19 missions.
Overview
Astronomy and astrophysics
On New Year's Day at 3:40 UTC marking the first launch of the new year, ISRO launched their XPoSat for studying X-ray polarization. It will serve as a complement to the present IXPE probe of NASA. Later the ISRO's Aditya-L1 spacecraft launched 5 months previously was inserted into a halo orbit around the Earth-Sun L1 point on 6 January. It will study the solar atmosphere, solar magnetic storms, and their impact on the environment around Earth.Einstein Probe, X-ray space telescope mission by the Chinese Academy of Sciences in partnership with ESA and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics dedicated to time-domain high-energy astrophysics, was launched on 9 January 2024.
In April 2024, NASA began, under the direction of the Office of Science and Technology Policy to create a standard for time on the Moon, it is called Coordinated Lunar Time and is expected to be completed by 2026.
The Space Variable Objects Monitor is a small X-ray telescope satellite for studying the explosions of massive stars by analyzing the resulting gamma-ray bursts, developed by China National Space Administration, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the French Space Agency, launched on 22 June 2024.
European Space Agency launched their PROBA-3 dual satellites for solar coronagraphy on 5 December 2024 on a PSLV-XL rocket.
Exploration of the Solar System
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity flew its 72nd and last flight on 18 January. Because all four of its rotor blades were damaged, NASA subsequently announced the end of mission for Ingenuity on 25 January.On 7 October, the ESA Hera spacecraft was launched successfully. It will arrive at the asteroid Didymos in 2026 after Mars flyby, where it will study the effects of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test.
NASA's Europa Clipper mission launched on 14 October to study the Galilean moon Europa while in orbit around Jupiter.
Lunar exploration
Artemis Program
In November, stacking operation begun for the Artemis 2 SLS solid rocket boosters segments. On 5 December, NASA updated the mission timeline, where Artemis 2 was delayed from 2025 September to 2026 April, and Artemis 3 from 2026 September to mid-2027. The delay is mainly attributed to problems involving the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft.Peregrine
lunar lander was successfully launched on 8 January, but after the launch a propellant leak was detected that precluded any attempt to perform a lunar landing. In the end, the Peregrine spacecraft never left the Earth orbit it was injected into by the carrier rocket, and the mission ended ten days later on 18 January when the spacecraft re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and was destroyed.SLIM
achieved the first-ever lunar soft landing for a Japanese spacecraft. It landed on 19 January 2024 at 15:20 UTC, making Japan the 5th country to soft land on the Moon. Although it landed successfully, it landed on its side with the solar panels oriented westwards facing opposite the Sun at the start of lunar day, thereby failing to generate enough power. The lander operated on an internal battery power, which was fully drained that day.Irrespective of this solar array issue on lander, the two LEV 1 and 2 rovers, deployed during hovering just before final landing worked as expected, with LEV-1 communicating independently to the ground stations. LEV-1 conducted seven hops over 107 minutes on lunar surface. Images taken by LEV-2 show the wrong attitude landing with loss of an engine nozzle during descent and even possible sustained damage to lander's Earth bound antenna, that is not pointed towards Earth. Irrespective of wrong attitude and loss of communication with the lander, the mission was fully successful after confirmation of its primary goal landing within of its landing spot was already achieved.
On 29 January, the lander resumed operations after being shut down for a week. JAXA said it re-established contact with the lander and its solar cells were working again after a shift in lighting conditions allowed it to catch sunlight. After that, SLIM was put in sleep mode for impending harsh lunar night. While SLIM was expected to operate only for one lunar daylight period, or 14 Earth days, with its on-board electronics not designed to withstand the nighttime temperatures on the Moon, it managed to survive 3 lunar nights, waking up on 25 February, 27 March and 24 April respectively, sending back more data and images. This feat of surviving lunar night without a radioisotope heater unit was only previously achieved by some landers in the Surveyor program.
Nova-C
Odysseus launched on 15 February 2024 towards the Moon via Falcon 9 on a direct intercept trajectory and later landed in the south polar region of the Moon on 22 February 2024 and became the first successful private lander and the first to do so using cryogenic propellants. Though it landed successfully, one of the lander's legs broke upon landing and it tilted up on other side, 18° due to landing on a slope, but the lander survived and payloads were functioning as expected.Just before landing, at approximately above the lunar surface, the Odysseus lander was planned to eject the EagleCam camera-equipped CubeSat, which would have been dropped onto the lunar surface near the lander, with an impact velocity of about. However, due to complications arising from the software patch, it was decided that EagleCam would not be ejected upon landing. It was later ejected on 28 February returning all types of data, except post IM-1 landing images that were the main aim of its mission.
The lander also includes the Lunar Library that contains a version of the English Wikipedia, artworks, selections from the Internet Archive, portions of the Project Gutenberg, and more. It is projected to reside on the Moon in a readable state for billions of years.
China Lunar Exploration Program
On 13 March, China attempted to launch two spacecrafts, DRO-A and DRO-B, into distant retrograde orbit around the Moon, but the mission failed to reach the strived for orbit, remaining stranded in a highly eliptical low Earth orbit. Tracking data appears to show China attempted to salvage the spacecraft and they appear to have succeeded in reaching their desired orbit.On 20 March, China launched its relay satellite, Queqiao-2, to lunar orbit, along with two mini satellites Tiandu 1 and 2. Queqiao-2 will relay communications for the Chang'e 6, Chang'e 7 and Chang'e 8 spacecrafts. Tiandu 1 and 2 will test technologies for a future lunar navigation and positioning constellation. All the three probes entered lunar orbit successfully on 24 March 2024.
China sent Chang'e 6 on 3 May 2024, which conducted the first lunar sample return from Apollo Basin on the far side of the Moon. This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first was achieved by Chang'e 5 from the lunar near side four years earlier. It carries several international payloads as well as an un-announced Chinese mini-rover called Jinchan to conduct infrared spectroscopy of lunar surface and imaged Chang'e 6 lander on lunar surface. The lander-ascender-rover combination was separated from the orbiter and returner before landing on 1 June 2024 at 22:23 UTC. It landed on the Moon's surface on 1 June 2024. The ascender was launched back to lunar orbit on 3 June 2024 at 23:38 UTC, carrying samples collected by the lander, and completed rendezvous and docking with the waiting orbiter in lunar orbit. The sample container was transferred to the returner, which landed in Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024, completing China's lunar far side sample return mission.
Pakistan sent a lunar orbiter called ICUBE-Q along with Chang'e 6. The lander also placed a small national flag of China, made of basalt, a substance that occurs in vast quantities on the Moon's surface, to demonstrate the spirit of in situ resource utilization. After dropping off the return samples for Earth, the Chang'e 6 orbiter was successfully captured by the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point on 9 September 2024.