{"id":5470,"date":"2023-01-24T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-24T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=5470"},"modified":"2023-01-18T15:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T15:03:52","slug":"nasas-busiest-year-in-decades-an-astronomer-sums-up-the-dizzying-array-of-missions-in-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/nasas-busiest-year-in-decades-an-astronomer-sums-up-the-dizzying-array-of-missions-in-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s busiest year in decades \u2013 an astronomer sums up the dizzying array of missions in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n The James Webb Space Telescope began sending its first images back to Earth in the summer of 2022.\n NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI via Flickr<\/a>, CC BY<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\nChris Impey<\/a>, University of Arizona<\/a><\/em><\/span>\n\n

NASA had a banner year in 2022<\/a>, with many successful missions in what was one of the organization\u2019s most active years in decades.<\/p>\n\n

I\u2019m a professor of astronomy<\/a> who has used NASA telescopes for decades to do research<\/a> in observational cosmology. I also have a keen interest in the role science plays in humanity\u2019s expansion into space<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

NASA\u2019s missions over the past year have been remarkably far-ranging \u2013 from practicing how to protect the Earth to preparing for the first manned mission to Mars and learning about the earliest days in the universe. By working in the extremes, scientists are learning about and doing more in space than ever before.<\/p>\n\n

\n \"An<\/a>\n
\n The DART mission successfully crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos and slightly nudged the orbit of the asteroid.<\/span>\n NASA\/Johns Hopkins APL<\/a>, CC BY-NC<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

Near and far<\/h2>\n\n

Some NASA missions in 2022 focused on protecting or learning more about the Earth, while other missions were focused as far from Earth as possible.<\/p>\n\n

Close to home, NASA nudged an asteroid<\/a> off its trajectory, successfully demonstrating technology that could save the Earth<\/a> if an\nasteroid or comet was on a collision course with Earth. <\/p>\n\n

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test<\/a>, or DART, slammed the 1,340-pound (610-kilogram) DART spacecraft into an 11 billion-pound (5 billion-kilogram) asteroid called Dimorphos. Dimorphos is the smaller of a pair of asteroids that flew past Earth last year. The impact happened 6 million miles (11.7 million kilometers) from Earth and altered the asteroid\u2019s orbit by a small but measurable amount<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Dimorphos and its twin, Didymos, were never a threat to humanity, but NASA tracks<\/a> potentially hazardous near-Earth objects for a reason, and DART showed that it would be possible to protect the Earth from an asteroid impact.<\/p>\n\n

NASA has also been studying water both near the Earth and in distant solar systems. On Dec. 16, 2022, a Space-X rocket carried NASA\u2019s Surface Water and Ocean Topography<\/a> satellite into orbit. This satellite will be looking down at Earth for three years in an attempt to survey nearly all the water on the Earth\u2019s surface. The resulting data will be crucial in understanding how climate change is altering the world\u2019s oceans.<\/p>\n\n

Looking out instead of down, NASA satellites also found two \u201cwater worlds<\/a>\u201d in a single star system 218 light years away. The planets are super-Earths<\/a>, about 50% bigger than our planet, but they have thousands of times more water. <\/p>\n\n

On average, the Earth\u2019s oceans are about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) deep. These two newly discovered exoplanets are covered in oceans 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) deep. The data astronomers are collecting on these planets is offering some of the best clues to date about these common super-Earths that may be more hospitable to life<\/a> than the Earth.<\/p>\n\n

Finally, the new James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> has been looking for distant galaxies as far from Earth as possible. Distant light is old light<\/a>, so the James Webb Space Telescope is capturing images of galaxies from the first few hundred million years<\/a> of the universe, allowing astronomers to learn a lot about what the infant universe was like<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

\n \"A<\/a>\n
\n The Artemis I mission launched the Orion capsule on a test trip around the Moon aboard the Space Launch System rocket and was the first of a series of launches for the Artemis program.<\/span>\n NASA\/Kim Shiflett via Flickr<\/a>, CC BY-NC-SA<\/a><\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n\n

Cheap and expensive<\/h2>\n\n

The James Webb Space Telescope was originally budgeted at US$1 billion in the early 2000s. By the time Webb launched, that price tag had ballooned to an astonishing cost of $10 billion<\/a>. But Webb was not the only expensive NASA mission from 2022.<\/p>\n\n

After numerous delays<\/a>, the Artemis 1 mission had a successful flyby of the Moon before it splashed down on Dec. 11, 2022<\/a> \u2013 50 years to the day after Apollo 17 was the last American spacecraft to land on the Moon.<\/p>\n\n

Artemis 1 is the first in a series of NASA missions that aim to return U.S. astronauts to the Moon<\/a> by 2030 and eventually establish a Moon base. Each launch is estimated to cost around $4.1 billion, with the entire program<\/a> \u2013 including four initial launches and associated research and development \u2013 expected to cost an eye-popping $93 billion. <\/p>\n\n

While many recent missions have been among the most ambitious and expensive in the history of space, in some ways 2022 was also the year space became cheap. NASA launched more than a dozen CubeSats<\/a>, shoe-box-sized satellites that can do science experiments in orbit at a cost of only $50,000<\/a> each. CubeSats weigh just a few pounds, and thanks to their small size and the ever-decreasing cost of rocket launches, even students can get an experiment into space. Almost 4,000 have been launched<\/a>, a number that\u2019s projected to double within six years.<\/p>\n\n

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