Looking Back At 2019: Spaceflight

China’s Chang’e 4 probe on Jan. 3 became the first spacecraft to soft-land on the far side of the Moon. The lander and its Yutu-2 rover were launched on Dec. 8, 2018, from Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China on a Long March 3B.

Efforts to reestablish communication with NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity ended Feb. 13 after being out of contact with Earth since June 2018—its solar panels apparently blanketed by a global dust storm. Intended to operate for 90 days, the rover landed on Mars in January 2004, three weeks after its twin, Spirit.

SpaceX’s unmanned Crew Dragon docked to the International Space Station on March 3, a key milestone in NASA’s quest to restore U.S. human transportation services to low Earth orbit. Progress toward the first crewed flight hit a major hurdle when a capsule exploded during static fire ground tests in April.

The Scaled Composites-built Stratolaunch air-launched rocket carrier made its first flight on April 13, becoming the largest aircraft by wingspan to fly. Stratolaunch Systems suspended work shortly after that flight, following the 2018 death of backer Paul Allen, but later resumed operations under new ownership.

NASA in May awarded Maxar Technologies the hotly competed contract to build a high-power solar-electric satellite bus that will become the base module of the planned lunar-orbiting Gateway. At 50 kW, the spacecraft has three times more power than previous solar-electric propulsion systems.

Small-satellite launch startup Virgin Orbit in July completed an unpowered flight test of its two-stage, liquid-fueled LauncherOne expendable rocket, paving the way for a trial run to space early in 2020. The rocket was dropped from beneath the wing of the company’s customized Boeing 747-400, “Cosmic Girl”.

In a key test of the powerful Raptor staged-combustion rocket engine for SpaceX’s next-generation Starship launch vehicle, the Starhopper vertical-takeoff-and-landing demonstrator completed a 57-sec. flight at its Boca Chica test site near Brownsville, Texas, on Aug. 27. Reaching a maximum altitude of around 500 ft., it translated horizontally to a vertical landing on a nearby landing pad.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission ended Sept. 6 when the Vikram lander, carrying the small Pragyan rover, crashed while attempting an automated soft landing at the Moon’s south pole. After separating from the orbiter on Sept. 2, it deviated from the planned trajectory and lost its signal during descent on Sept. 6.

Reaction Engines’ precooler ran at Mach 5 temperatures in October. The tests validated for the first time the capability of the novel heat-exchanger design to enable the UK company’s SABRE air-breathing rocket engine to operate at hypersonic flight conditions for atmospheric and space access applications.

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule was launched into space for the first time on Dec. 20, but a timer issue prevented the unmanned spacecraft’s engine from firing as required to reach the International Space Station. A parachute landing on White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, is still planned for Dec. 22.