Space exploration
The space shuttle program is over, but that did not mean a lack of launches in 2012. In the wake of 2012’s space shuttle retirement, NASA has been encouraging commercial companies to develop spaceships that can pick up the slack in carrying both cargo and crew to the International Space Station. Тhe first of these private vehicles was set to make its maiden voyage to the orbiting laboratory. The Dragon space capsule developed by Hawthorne, Calif., company Space Exploration Technology (SpaceX - Elon Musk) was scheduled to launch atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket Feb. 7. A few days later, the craft was due to autonomously rendezvous with the space station. Another burgeoning field of commercial spaceflight is the suborbital space tourist industry. A leader in this market is Mojave, Calif.based Virgin Galactic, headed by British billionaire Sir Richard Branson. Virgin Galactic’s plans was to fly paying passengers on suborbital joy rides to the edge of space and back, initially at $200,000 a pop. China, a growing player in space, was working on its own manned space station. In 2012 the nation launched its first space station test module and conducted its first in-orbit rendezvous and docking. The next docking missions, which will further develop this critical skill for building a space station, will be Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10. At least one of them will be crewed, Chinese officials have said. NASA’s Dawn probe, launched in 2007, has been in orbit around the asteroid Vesta since July 2011. Vesta is the second-most- massive body in theasteroid belt betweenMars and Jupiter. In July, the $466 million Dawn spacecraft was due to depart Vesta and head toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the only larger body in the asteroid belt. Its arrival is set for February 2015. The probe aims to study these space rocks for clues about the history of our solar system and the formation of the planets. NASA’s huge new rover Curiosity, the centerpiece of the space agency’s Mars Science Laboratory mission, was expected to land on the Red Planet 6th of August. The $2.5 billion Curiosity lifted off Nov. 26, 2011. It’s the largest and most ambitiously designed Mars rover to date, packed with 10 different science instruments to search for signs that Mars is, or ever was, habitable to life.
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