With humankind's ever-expanding fleet of spacecraft making the rounds of our solar system, and the growing number of space- and ground-based telescopes scanning the heavens, new space news can happen any day.
Some events are scheduled, however, and this new regular feature will try to keep track of them for space-loving Kossacks. (Please email me, pat208, with your suggestions and reminders of upcoming events.)
A calendar of upcoming events below the fold.
- Feb. 24, 4:50pm EST: NASA has scheduled the next launch of shuttle Discovery - its last trip to space. Discovery will deliver the Express Logistics Carrier 4 (ELC4), a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MLPM) and critical spare components to the International Space Station. (Endeavor's final flight is slotted for April.)
- March 18: Messenger is only 3+ weeks away from orbital insertion around Mercury. The craft has made several flybys of Earth and Venus and two flybys of Mercury itself, to position itself for its orbital mission. It will be the first Mercury orbiter, and its flybys have already given us greater detail and coverage of the innermost planet (see 2010 montage above).
The rest of the year will be full of milestones that promise outstanding images and valuable science:
- August: the orbiter Juno will start its long journey to Jupiter
- Sept. 8 (approximate): launch of the Luna orbiter GRAIL
- October: launch of the lander Mars Science Lab
- November: launch of the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission to to Mars and its moons. The lander is designed to return soil samples to Earth.
Perhaps the most exciting event of the year will be the August arrival of the Dawn spacecraft at the large asteroid Vesta (see image below). This will be the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, and after its Vesta mission it will leave orbit and head to the largest, most mysterious asteroid of all, the dwarf planet Ceres.