Space Highlights Of 2022

NASA’s Orion deep-space crew capsule concluded the 25.5-day Artemis I test flight with a Dec. 11 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California. NASA’s first Space Launch System lifted off on the Artemis I mission Nov. 16, sending the uncrewed Orion on a distant retrograde orbit around the Moon. The Artemis II mission to carry four crew around the Moon is planned for 2024.

In June, NASA announced it was commissioning a study team to examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP)—observations of events that cannot be identified as aircraft or known natural phenomena. NASA selected 16 individuals to conduct the nine-month independent scientific study, which began in late October and will lay the groundwork for future study of UAPs.

In July, NASA’s $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope completed commissioning at the L2 Lagrange point and returned the first full-color images and spectroscopic data. The telescope is still being tweaked, to mitigate expected micrometeorite impacts on the primary mirror and an unexpected anomaly with one of the midinfrared instrument’s four observation modes.

On Sept. 26, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos, moonlet of the asteroid Didymos, altering its orbit and providing the first demonstration of a spacecraft impact strategy for diverting an asteroid or a comet on a course to hit Earth.

Despite several setbacks, Astroscale in May declared its ELSA-d end-of-life services demonstration mission a success after several controlled close-approach rendezvous operations between its two spacecraft in orbit. Operations had to be conducted with only four of the eight thrusters on the servicer. The ELSA-d servicer and client remain on orbit, safely separated, while Astroscale decides the next steps.

Europe’s upgraded Vega-C-light launcher made a successful first flight on July 13 from Kourou, French Guiana,  under the authority of the European Space Agency. The first operational Vega C launch by Arianespace on Dec. 20 failed to place the Pleiades Neo 5 and 6 satellites into orbit because of an anomaly in the second-stage Zefiro 40 engine, about 144 sec. into the flight.

A U.S. Space Force Boeing X-37B reusable spaceplane landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Nov. 12, completing a 908-day mission that set a record for endurance while performing several classified and unclassified missions. The Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6) mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in May 2020.

China launched the third and final piece of the Tiangong space station, the Mengtian space module, into orbit in October. The Mengtian module joined the Tianhe and Wentian modules and for a time the space station had three spacecraft docked, the Shenzhou-14 and -15 crew capsules and Tianzhou-5 cargo vehicle.

Boeing’s uncrewed CST-100 Starliner completed a six-day roundtrip test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) May 25, the capsule touching down on the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. NASA and Boeing are to launch a crewed test flight of the CST-100 to the ISS in April 2023.