2024 has been a year in space that has seen successes, failures, a clutch of firsts, and some goodbyes – not to mention a long-distance probe rescue, spacesuits on the catwalk, and a couple of cosmic oddities. Let's have a look back.
Earth Orbit
One of the big firsts in 2024 came from SpaceX as it finally managed to fly its Starship into space without blowing up. That's not bad for the world's largest rocket, which dwarfs even the Apollo era Saturn V, but the company took it one step further in October.
Sure, building a giant rocket and blasting it into orbit is okay, but how about doing something really impressive? SpaceX’s “hold my beer” answer was to not only fly Starship again. It did an encore by catching the huge Super Heavy first stage booster in a pair of steel chopsticks when it returned to Earth under its own power.
Show offs.
However, where you get ladders you also have snakes and the ongoing space snake for Boeing to slide down has been the continuing embarrassment of the company's Starliner crewed spacecraft’s visit to the International Space Station (ISS).
Already years behind schedule and billions over budget, the first Starliner mission carrying astronauts to the orbital lab was supposed to be vindication for Boeing after a string of setbacks and failures, including airliners that can't seem to keep their doors on.
Originally scheduled to visit the ISS for eight days when it lifted off in June, thruster problems made Starliner too dangerous to return with a crew on board, so the two NASA astronauts have seen their stay slightly stretched to nine months.
And counting.
September saw cheerier news as the first private spacewalk in history was completed. It wasn't exactly Ed White or Alexi Leonov floating free on the end of a tether. More of a standing on the space porch and gawking at Earth, but it still counts.
However, when the tourist-nauts did their walk, they weren't going into the history books, they were part of a cosmic fashion show as they wore new SpaceX EVA suits that were designed for leaving the spacecraft rather than protecting the crew in an emergency. China also showed off its new space togs while NASA even went so far as to team up with Prada (yes, that one) to outfit its astronauts for the space agency's return to the Moon.
Moon
Meanwhile, on the Moon, some firsts were being clocked up in 2024. In January, the US commercial Peregrine mission was supposed to be America's return to the Moon after half a century, but it turned out to be a frustrating preview as a propulsion system malfunction caused it to scrub the landing in exchange for a fiery burnup in the Earth's atmosphere.
Japan had better luck that same month as its SLIM lander made it the 5th nation to successfully touch down on the Moon. Granted, SLIM bounced on landing and ended up resting on its nose, which caused no end of problems, as these things do, but the little craft was built better than expected as it survived multiple encounters with the deadly cold of the lunar night.
The US had better luck in February when the commercial Odysseus lander lighted on the lunar surface. Then one of the legs failed and the lander fell over.
Well, if it was easy, then everyone would be doing it.
China fared much better with its Chang'e-6 when it landed not just on the Moon but on the far side. Not content, it even brought back samples to Earth – a decent 4.3 lb (1.9 kg) of Moon dust.
Mars
Mars in 2024 was the site of the sad end of a machine that lived far beyond expectations. On January 18, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter flew for the last time. Given that on landing its rotors broke off, that's a pretty definitive conclusion.
Not that Ingenuity didn't have a good innings. After its first flight in 2021, it was only supposed to fly five times over 30 Martian days. It went well beyond that, making 72 flights lasting a total of over two hours in three Earth years. If that wasn't enough of a record, NASA added to the list in December when it released the longest distance air accident investigation in history, assessing what went wrong on the last flight from 100 million miles away.
Voyager
Meanwhile, a bit farther from home (some 15.5 billion miles/24.9 billion km), NASA spent 2024 coaxing its Voyager 1 deep space probe to keep working for as long as its nuclear power supply lasts. That the almost half-century old spacecraft is still functioning is a testament to 1970s over-engineering, but the years have taken their toll. Not only did the probe's thrusters go wonky because of decades of gunk building up in the pipes, but the onboard computer had a fit, cutting off communication with Earth. Fortunately NASA engineers were able to switch to an idle secondary thruster system and a 'gibberish' data download from Voyager allowed them to deduce the source of the computer glitch and program a workaround.
Bye-bye, ISS
Even the best engineering can't hold off the inevitable and 2024 saw the International Space Station (ISS) getting to the point where the end of its service life became a serious topic. After a quarter of a century, the orbital lab is showing its years with thermal and mechanical stresses taking their toll and a persistent air leak in one of the Russian modules a cause for concern.
The question now is what to do with the giant spacecraft after it retires in 2030. You can't just leave a thing like that lying around, so NASA tapped SpaceX to create a souped up version of its Dragon spacecraft to act as a space tug to guide it back into the Earth's atmosphere to safely burn up.
Artemis
Speaking of the future, NASA's Artemis project got another setback last year, with its Artemis II and Artemis III lunar missions pushed back to 2026 and 2027 respectively due to technical problems with the life support system and the return capsule's heat shield. The good news is that by the time American astronauts do return to the Moon, it may have its own special time zone courtesy of Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Oddities
2024 also saw its share of space oddities. Two of these definitely caught our eye. One is that the volcanoes of Mars, the highest in the solar system, have more than height to boast about. According to one study, even in the extremely dry Martian atmosphere, the climatic conditions inside the volcanoes' craters are such that frost can form even though it's never been found elsewhere on Mars – even at the poles.
Another oddity is that there is a speed demon of a galaxy that is barreling through another cluster of galaxies at 3.2 million km/h (2 million mph). In human terms, that's about as crazy a velocity as you can get, put in cosmic terms it's a slow stroll.
If 2024 wasn't jam-packed enough, it looks like 2025 will be a bumper space year with over a dozen new rockets slated to make their maiden flights, including Blue Origin's New Glenn launcher, along with 25 SpaceX Starship launches. That's about twice as many as the Saturn V flew during the entire Apollo and Skylab programs. There will be more American and Japanese commercial lunar landings, another private crewed space mission to the ISS, plus the usual smattering of meteor showers and comet visits, as well as the unexpected.
As they say in the sci-fi B-movies, keep watching the skies.