Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2005-07-24 01:22:15

I've tried to check up on everything happening in this area for the next few years on each nation or agency

Here are some of the significant things in the area of un-manned missions and date for things happening in the space in the near future.
NASA have launched the Mercury Messenger probe, it was sent up in 2004 and will orbit the planet Mercury in 2011. Europe's Cern and FermiLab designs are also expanding and will perhaps open new forms of energy such as anti-matter propulsion. There were also plans for the MTO mission but it looks like this project has been axed. USA have an Asteroid mission called DAWN, will fly past a few small asteroids before changing speed to orbit one of the largest asteroids – Vesta. There, it will change speeds several times to vary the orbit for different science observations. Cameras and sensors will map the surface and gather clues to its mineral composition. After a year’s exploration, Dawn will change speed once more to leave Vesta and fly by another small asteroid, or possibly orbit the largest asteroid – Ceres. Dawn is a mission to explore the structure and composition of Ceres and Vesta, two large asteroids that have remained relatively unchanged since their formation at the dawn of our solar system. The mission is expected to launch in 2006. The USA will send up Phoenix in 2007 to Mars there were also calls for JIMO to Jupiter's Moons and the Neptune Orbiter with Probes part of NASA's "Vision Missions" would be a nuclear-fission powered exploration craft to Neptune Here is the newmars thread on the Mercury probe.
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … 16&start=0
Europe has already their own moon project with the craft Smart-1 which is going strong and sending back photos it will start mapping the Lunar Surface and uses the experimental ion-drive technology. SMART-1 will look for signs of water in the form of ice on the Moon, that ice is thought to be tucked away within permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. Europe have built the Columbus module for the ISS, they have also plans for the design for the jules-verne ATV, and with the Aurora to Mars Europe will be doing more robotic missions to Mars. Rosetta is a project by the Europeans and will be the first mission ever to land on a comet, the craft will rely solely on solar cells and two harpoons will anchor the probe to the surface, the self-adjusting landing gear will ensure that it stays upright, it will using fly-bys of the Earth and Mars to help it to get to its final destination it will also fly past Asteroid Steins. Corot will be the first mission capable of detecting rocky planets and astronomers from ESA's Member States are taking part in a French led mission to be the first to search for rocky planets around other stars. Corot will be placed on a circular orbit allowing continuous observation for more than 150 days of two regions in the sky. Corot will also be used to detect 'starquakes' that sends ripples across a star's surface. This will be a French mission in partnership with the ESA and will launch in 2006 from a Soyuz-Fregat launcher at Baikonur. Watch out for Don Quixote where ESA do a similar mission to NASA's Deep impact by this time doing a missile type strike on an Asteroid. Here is a thread on ESA's Asteroid mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic … highlight=
The Russian government has approved a space programme for the next 10 years. The programme provides money for the development of a reusable spacecraft to replace the ageing Soyuz manned launch vehicle. Russia also wants to start experiments to test whether it is possible for humans to make the flight to Mars. Under the plans, six volunteers will spend 500 days in a mock space module in Moscow. Over 20 volunteers have already applied to take part. Russia is to build a space launch pad in South Korea by 2007, Itar-Tass news agency reported, Russian space agency Roskosmos and Khrunichev said that a contract covering "construction of a rocket launch pad for civilian use and space exploration" was signed by both countries. South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology said that South Korea intends to spend 13 million dollars on dispatching its first spaceman to the ISS on board the Russian space ship Soyuz. Russia has laos plans for Venus, the Moon and Mars. Russian mission Phobos-Grunt has been given high priority, the Phobos-Grunt is a planned Russian sample return mission to Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. Russia is touting the Klipper spacecraft as a replacement for their workhorse spacecraft, the Soyuz and in 2007 a Soyuz launcher will take off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. On the Soyuz fly me to the Moon the idea is to sell one of three Soyuz seats to a space tourist for an initial week-long stay at the International Space Station (ISS). The space sightseer and fellow crew members would then add to their travelogue by sojourning onward for a week-long lunar stint. The Russians have already been pushing Space Tourism and other scinece missions like the Ptaneta-A program and Aster projects are under consideration and Roscosmos have Venus lander designs called Venera-D. Here is the newmars thread on Russia's Mars mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1521
Chardrayaan-1 will be the first Indian Mission to the Moon and devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features, Europe seems to be helping India on their Lunar mission. It is likely that Japan will be also looking at the Moon, however Japan's struggling lunar programme is plagued by money shortages and technical hitches. Ten years of an economic slow down with the Japanese economy and the failures of the JAXA Mars mission are not helping the space projects. JAXA with the Japanese Hayabusa it is due to rendevous with the asteroid Itokawa (1998SF36) NASDA or JAXA have other plans Japanese H-2 Transfer Vehicle or HTV seems to be on track. Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a space shuttle within the next 20 years newspaper reports have said. Solar-B, is a follow-on to the highly successful Japan/US/UK Yohkoh or Solar-A. It is also likely that Japan will take part in the mission for Europe's twin BepiColumbo orbiters at Mercury. The Japanese have also recently launched the JapanAstro-E2 Satellite, Suzuka, is a replacement for the Astro-E satellite, which was destroyed because of a launch failure in 2000, innovative instrumentation on board the satellite will explore the Universe in energetic x-rays. Japan plans to start building a manned base on the moon and a space shuttle within the next 20 years newspaper reports have said. Here is the news mars topic on Hayabusa the Japanese asteroid mission rendezvous
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1594
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is to launch August 2005. The USA will see the launch of STEREO in 2006 making a 3D map of the structure of the Sun. Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) mission will address the origin, evolution and interplanetary consequences of one the most massive disturbances in our solar system called the coronal mass ejection (CME). The United States will launch Mars Sample Return Orbiter in 2015, the most difficult step in the robotic exploration of Mars is the Mars Sample Return Mission. NASA plans to send a major mission to return samples of Martian rock and soil to Earth. Current plans call for such a large-scale sample return mission to be launched in 2014, and a second in 2016.The USA will see New-Horizons go on a 15 year trek to study Pluto and Kuiper Belt objects, and additional elements of the spacecraft and instrument payload were installed on the New Horizons spacecraft. These included an array of heaters, inertial measurement units, a repaired flight computer, and the Ralph remote sensing instrument package. New Horizons will fly over Mysterious Pluto, Congress gave NASA money for a mission to Pluto over the space agency's objection. The bill, signed by President George W. Bush, placed $110 million in NASA's 2003 budget for the New Horizons project. The money allowed the spacecraft design team to start on the final design of the interplanetary probe. Called the next Hubble scope the USA also have plans for the JWST, this could be a great mission.
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2191
Chinese plans for lunar landing and Moon exploration. Chinese exploration of the solar system have also featured in media reports. China is also scheduled to launch its first space telescope, into orbit in the near future. With a 100-cm optical lens and a group of X-ray equipped telescopes on it, the 2-ton-weight telescope, called "Space Solar Telescope", is designed with a service term of three to five years. With the cost of over RMB 2 billion yuan, the Space Solar Telescope is China's most expensive space explorer by far. Differing from Hubble, China's Space Solar Telescope will focus on diversification of solar magnetic field, as well as solar activities and the space climate. Luna-Glob will be a Russia China operation, a Joint project with Russian and Chinese Space Agencies to do a project with high speed penetrators and sample return from the Moon. China's second manned space flight will carry two astronauts into space and will orbit the Earth for five days. The country's space authorities made the announcement about the mission. China Daily reports : "For the first time, astronauts will enter and live in the orbital module of the spacecraft to do scientific experiments," the China Aerospace Science and Technology (CAST) group's official statement said, the Chinese are also said to be looking at a heavy launcher
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2565
Venus Express is a European craft and will be the first spacecraft to perform a global investigation of the Venusian atmosphere. ESA objectives are to study the Venusian atmosphere, the plasma environment, and the surface of Venus in great detailand they have begun to reuse much of the design of the Mars Express spacecraft for Venus.
Hyper is a mission that will investigate two of the fundamental forces of nature: gravity and electromagnetism. For its investigation into gravity, Hyper will precisely map the fabric of space around the Earth, strictly testing Albert Einstein's theory of gravity: General Relativity. Europeans are also working on the idea of their own Super-Scope called the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope with designs by the ESO. The OWL will be able to beat possible distorting effects by using 'adaptive optics' and it will be a ground based scope about 100M or 109Yards across. ESA's Vega has been designed as a single body launcher with three solid propulsion stages and an additional liquid propulsion upper module used for attitude and orbit control, and satellite release. Unlike most small launchers, Vega will be able to place multiple payloads into orbit. Development of the Vega launcher started in 1998. The first launch is planned for 2007 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana where the Ariane-1 launch facilities are being adapted for its use. The Europeans are also working on the Solar Orbiter and this craft will study the dynamo deep inside the Sun that is the probable source of the magnetic activity, the Solar Orbiter is managed by ESA, but has strong international collaboration and NASA is likely to become involved as a partner. MICROSCOPE will be a joint CNES-ESA-ONERA mission will test Equivalence Principle, one of the foundations of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The Herschel Space will be an Observatory for Infrared at the 2nd Lagrange point. XEUS will be a permanent space-borne X-ray observatory that the ESA are currently working on. Planck is a European mission with international support from the US scientific tems, it will look back at the dawn of time. And finally Gaia will be one of the most fantastic missions of the future, it be so powerful that it will perhaps find 10,000 to 50,000 extra solar planets, the Gaia will conduct a census of one thousand million stars. Gaia will be placed in an orbit around the Sun, at a distance of 1.5 million kilometres further out than Earth, a special location, known as L2 and here is the thread on this Gaia mission
http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1443

seems there is a lot going on in the near future

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2005-08-02 17:48:14

Here are some links

Russian mission Phobos-Grunt, the main purpose is similar to Phobos-2, with the addition of a sample return.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/ESA_Permane … QWD_0.html

Japan's next solar physics mission ( Japan - UK - USA ) Solar-B
http://www.mssl.ucl.ac.uk/www_detector/ … b_fpp.html

NASA's TPF search for small rocky Earth like planets
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/TPF/tpf_what_is.cfm

Third M3 of ESA's Horizon 2000 Scientific Programme, and is today part of its Cosmic Vision Programme.planned to launch Planck in the first quarter of 2007
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=PLANCK

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2005-09-19 09:35:09

Chandrayana India
http://www.hindu.com/2004/01/23/stories … 910300.htm

BepiColombo ESA
http://home.cwru.edu/~sjr16/advanced/near_esa.html

evilcitizen · 2005-09-19 21:15:53

Russia is to build a space launch pad in South Korea by 2007, Itar-Tass news agency reported, Russian space agency Roskosmos and Khrunichev said that a contract covering "construction of a rocket launch pad for civilian use and space exploration" was signed by both countries. South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology said that South Korea intends to spend 13 million dollars on dispatching its first spaceman to the ISS on board the Russian space ship Soyuz.

That's interesting, I didn't know SKorea wanted to get in on the space exploration game. And wouldn't have expected them to go with the Russians, but I guess it makes sense (nervous about China, still resent Japan, EU too far away).

Chardrayaan-1 will be the first Indian Mission to the Moon and devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features, Europe seems to be helping India on their Lunar mission.

Didn't know India was jumping on the bandwagon as well, certainly doesn't get any press coverage.

I'm glad to see so many countries joining the fray though. A healthy mix of both cooperation and competition is good for everyone.

EuroLauncher · 2006-01-04 11:59:12

busy year for arrivals and departures in the solar system.
http://www.newscientistspace.com/articl … news_rss20

...Another planet, Mars, will receive a new visitor on 10 March, when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is due to enter orbit. It will spend the following six months looping around the planet in an elliptical orbit - passing very close to the planet and then zooming away to high altitude. But it will gradually adjust the orbit to a more circular shape. The science phase of the mission is scheduled to begin in November.
Two planets away, the European Space Agency's Venus Express spacecraft will begin orbiting its target on 11 April.
Asteroids will also be targeted in 2006, with NASA scheduled to launch the Dawn spacecraft no sooner than 17 November. It will explore Ceres and Vesta, two objects in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. However, that mission has experienced budget and technical problems, so the launch date remains tentative.
Our star, the Sun, will not be left out of planned space activities. On 26 May, NASA will launch the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission, the first pair of spacecraft devoted to making three-dimensional measurements of the Sun and solar wind.

EuroLauncher · 2006-03-06 12:22:52

On the good side

Shuttle and ISS got their money, there was more money for Hubble
and CEV and the Stick appear to be doing ok.

On the very bad side :
Axed/Shutdown

- MTO is dead
- The outrigger Keck telescopes got axed
- Dawn got chopped down

On the bad side
In Danger of cutting or dealy/deferred

-TPF looks like it will be cut
-MSR looks delayed
-LISA and Constellation-X will be delayed indefinitely
-NuSTAR is in danger
-JIMO is unlikely
-Europa probe is indefinitely delayed
-TRMM & enviornmental sats are in danger
-Aeronautic designs for parachutes + Mars Airplane etc looks to be delayed
-SOFIA is held back
-Mars research has been cut by $243.3 million to $700.2 million
-SIM is in danger
-Juno is under threat
-Kepler is delayed
-SMEX might be cut

Mars_B4_Moon · 2006-04-07 20:25:42

Russia is to build a space launch pad in South Korea by 2007, Itar-Tass news agency reported, Russian space agency Roskosmos and Khrunichev said that a contract covering "construction of a rocket launch pad for civilian use and space exploration" was signed by both countries. South Korea's Ministry of Science and Technology said that South Korea intends to spend 13 million dollars on dispatching its first spaceman to the ISS on board the Russian space ship Soyuz.
That's interesting, I didn't know SKorea wanted to get in on the space exploration game. And wouldn't have expected them to go with the Russians, but I guess it makes sense (nervous about China, still resent Japan, EU too far away).
Chardrayaan-1 will be the first Indian Mission to the Moon and devoted to high-resolution remote sensing of the lunar surface features, Europe seems to be helping India on their Lunar mission.
Didn't know India was jumping on the bandwagon as well, certainly doesn't get any press coverage.
I'm glad to see so many countries joining the fray though. A healthy mix of both cooperation and competition is good for everyone.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2005-07-24 01:22:15

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#2 2005-08-02 17:48:14

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#3 2005-09-19 09:35:09

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#4 2005-09-19 21:15:53

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#5 2006-01-04 11:59:12

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#6 2006-03-06 12:22:52

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#7 2006-04-07 20:25:42

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

#8 2006-08-08 21:30:40

Re: Some of the best un-manned projects of the near future

Board footer