Moon, Mars and beyond: What 2026 has in store for space ambitions

The year 2025 saw several significant space-related developments, including the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station and the return of NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to Earth after being stuck on the ISS for 286 days.

The attention now shifts to what 2026 has in store for humankind's space ambitions. Here are the top five missions to look out for in 2026:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is set to launch Artemis II by April 2026. Four astronauts will venture around the Moon aboard the space agency's Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft. Artemis II will be the first crewed mission on NASA's path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration through Artemis.

Artemis II is also aimed at building the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars, the American space agency said. The 10-day flight will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

This mission aims to build on the success of the uncrewed Artemis I in 2022 and will demonstrate a broad range of capabilities needed on deep space missions.

The commander for this mission will be Reid Wiseman, while Victor Glover will pilot the spacecraft. Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen will be the mission specialists. The crew will travel around 4,700 miles beyond the Moon's far side, and from this vantage point, they will be able to see the Earth and the Moon from Orion's windows, with the Moon close in the foreground and the Earth nearly a quarter-million miles in the background.

Artemis II will be followed by another trip by the Orion and its crew. Only this time, under the Artemis III mission, the astronauts will once again make a giant leap by walking on the lunar surface.

This will be NASA's first crewed mission to orbit the Moon since Apollo 8 in 1968.

In 2024, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) began preparing for the Gaganyaan project, which was approved in 2019. The Gaganyaan project aims to launch three crew members into an orbit of 400 kilometres for a three-day mission and bring them safely back to Earth, by splashing down in the Indian sea waters.

LVM3, ISRO's proven and reliable heavy lift launcher, will be the launch vehicle for the Gaganyaan mission. The launch vehicle will be re-configured to meet human rating requirements and turned into a Human Rated LVM3 or HLVM3. This will launch the Orbital Module to an intended Low Earth Orbit of 400 km.

HLVM3 consists of Crew Escape System (CES) powered by a set of quick-acting, high burn rate solid motors, which ensures that the Crew Module, along with the crew, is taken to a safe distance in case of any emergency, either at the launch pad or during the ascent phase, the space agency said.

The human-rated LVM3 will be launched in early 2026, carrying the first uncrewed mission of Gaganyaan with a robot 'Vyommitra' onboard the crew module, news agency PTI reported.

ISRO plans to launch its crewed Gaganyaan mission into low Earth orbit in 2027.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is planning to launch the first Starships to Mars in 2026, which will gather critical data on entry and landing, serving as the forerunners to future crew and cargo deliveries to the planet's surface.

Musk's space firm said that achieving the establishment of a self-sufficient city on Mars will require upwards of one million people and millions of tonnes of cargo to be delivered on the planet.

According to SpaceX's website, Starships will launch over 10 times per day to maximise transfer windows that open up approximately every 26 months, and it will ultimately transfer crew and equipment to build a lasting presence on another world.

The space agency's website explained the reason behind choosing the Red planet for building a habitable city, and said that Mars is one of Earth's closest habitable neighbours at an average distance of 140 million miles.

"Mars is about half again as far from the Sun as Earth is, so it still has decent sunlight. It is a little cold, but we can warm it up. Its atmosphere is primarily C02 with some nitrogen and argon and a few other trace elements, which means that we can grow plants on Mars just by compressing the atmosphere," the website states.

Mars has about 38 per cent of the gravity of Earth, enabling humans to lift heavy things and move around. Additionally, the day is also remarkably close to that of Earth. While the Earth has 24 hours, Mars has 24 hours and 37 minutes. Mars is 4.5 billion years old.

Starship -- Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket -- is a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond, SpaceX states.

Starship is capable of carrying up to 150 metric tonnes fully reusable and 250 metric tonnes expendable.

According to SpaceX's website, Starship will enter the Red planet's atmosphere at 7.5 kilometres per second and decelerate aerodynamically. The vehicle's heat shield is said to be designed to withstand multiple entries; however, given that the vehicle entering Mars' atmosphere experiences higher levels of atomic oxygen, we expect to see harsher conditions during entry.

Additionally, SpaceX plans to begin Starship cargo flights to the Martian surface for research, development, and exploratory missions starting in 2030, at a rate of $100 million per metric ton.

The United Arab Emirates is planning to launch a mission to the far side of the moon in 2026. The Arab nation's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC) has completed the development of its lunar mission's Rashid Rover 2 and will launch it aboard US-based Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost 2 lunar lander.

The Emirates Lunar Mission is aimed at developing a series of rovers to explore the moon's surface at various locations with different scientific objectives.

The UAE's space agency said that each rover built under the Emirates Lunar Mission is named "Rashid" rover after the late Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, builder of modern Dubai.

Rashid 2 is the second rover within the Emirates Lunar programme, designed, developed and built by MBRSC.

According to MBRSC's website, Rashid 2 has three main objectives:

Rashid 2 will be the UAE's second attempt to land a rover on the Moon's surface after the unsuccessful Rashid 1 mission in April 2023. UAE had sent Rashid 1 in partnership with a Japanese company, ISpace's Hakuto-R mission, the UAE's The National newspaper reported.

Rashid 1 was unsuccessful as the Japanese lander crashed into the lunar surface.

Now, Firefly Aerospace, headquartered in central Texas, has joined hands with the UAE's MBRSC to help land the Rashid 2 Rover on the far side of the Moon on the US-based agency's Blue Ghost lander.

Rashid 2 will join Firefly Aerospace's second lunar mission in 2026, along with payloads from Australia, the European Space Agency, and NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, the Texas-based company's website states.

The European Space Agency is planning to launch HENON CubeSat mission, which is aimed at performing a demonstration of Space Weather measurements in Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) for three to six hours advanced warning of solar storms.

Heliospheric Pioneer for Solar and Interplanetary Threats Defence (HENON) is an upcoming 12U XL CubeSat mission, according to the ESA's website. The mission, which will be a demo of deep-space CubeSat technologies, will also perform a transfer from Sun-Earth L1/L2 to DRO using electric propulsion.

The mission's launch is planned for December 2026.

The HENON CubeSat's payloads will include an energetic particle flux telescope (proto/electron/heavy iron), a magnetometer on a boom, and a Faraday Cup Analyser.

According to the ESA's website, HENON is a "stand-alone deep space CubeSat demonstrator mission targeting space weather observations from a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) in the Sun-Earth system in order to enhance forecasting capabilities and science".

The HENON mission has four key objectives, as per ESA. And these are:

The European Space Agency stated that advances in space weather forecasting need longer advance warning times for solar storms coming from what it described as "Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) and their resulting Solar Proton Events (SPEs)".

Spacecraft located at the Lagrange L1 point between the Sun and Earth provide the advanced warning in today's time, and Vigil at L5 will provide the data in the 2030s.

"By exploiting measurements on the sunward side of the DRO (at ~0.1 AU from Earth), which has never been explored before, the HENON 12U XL CubeSat will enable a significant improvement in the advance warning time and hence forecasting of major solar events compared to spacecraft at Sun-Earth L1," the ESA website reads.

Source: HindustanTimes
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