The solar system.

Three space missions will make history in the coming days 

At the beginning of 2019, humanity will observe the farthest world that has been visited in the Solar System, orbit an asteroid and land on the hidden side of the Moon.

 

 

While millions of people are preparing for the end of the year party, an unmanned spacecraft more than 110 million kilometers from Earth will light its rockets to make history. The NASA Osiris-Rex probe will descend into the asteroid Bennu and begin to orbit it just one and a half kilometers from the surface. Never before had such a maneuver been attempted, which depends on the microgravity force exerted by the rock, barely 500 meters in diameter.

The insertion in orbit will be one of the first milestones for this mission whose final objective is to touch the ground of the asteroid for five seconds, aspirate a sample of earth and send it back to Earth in the year 2023.

 Bennu belongs to the oldest type of asteroids in the Solar System. It is thought that it has remained almost intact since it was formed 4 billion years ago. These bodies contain organic compounds and amino acids, basic elements for life on our planet. But when one of these bodies hits the Earth, much of its content burns in the atmosphere.


"This will be the first time we can analyze a pristine material that we have never had access to",
Javier Licandro, one of the four researchers from the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands who collaborate with the mission of the US space agency. His team analyzes the images taken by the three cameras on board the probe and determines the composition of the asteroid, a task that will help to fix the extraction point of the sample.

  

Reconstrucción de la sonda ‘New Horizons’ sobrevolando Ultima Thule. NASA / VÍDEO: EPV

 

About 1,130,000,000 results (0.66 seconds)

On January 1, 2019, more than 6,000 million kilometers, another US probe - New Horizons - will show for the first time Ultima Thule, the farthest body of the Solar System that has been visited. This world is beyond Pluto, inside the Kuiper belt, a disk that can contain thousands of asteroids and billions of comets that extend to the ends of the Solar System. 

Ultima was discovered in 2014 and observed from Earth thanks to two astronomical expeditions to Patagonia Argentina and Senegal that allowed estimating its diameter: about 30 kilometers. "Ultima Thule means: from now on the unknown begins" in Latin, explains Adriana Ocampo, one of the heads of the program New Frontiers of NASA that includes New Horizons, Osiris-Rex and Juno that explores Jupiter. Ultima "is the most primitive object that has ever been flown over and can clarify the role that Kuiper belt objects continue to play by deflecting comets from their trajectories and bringing them closer to the core of the solar system, a process that could sow life on our planet due to impacts of these bodies, "explains Ocampo.

 

The encounter with Ultima Thule will be fleeting but productive. The ship will go about 3,500 kilometers from the surface of 2014 MU69, the official name of this body, three times closer than Pluto flew. There he discovered for the first time the geography of the dwarf planet and supported the idea that under a thick layer of ice there can be a liquid ocean with as much salt water as there is on Earth. For 72 hours, New Horizons cameras will take high-resolution images of Ultima Thule, look for possible moons and rings, and determine if it is composed of two objects traveling together almost touching or just one. 

NASA hopes to publish the first images of the body on January 2 and in that first week of the year high-resolution images will arrive. "This mission is something epic, historical," says Ocampo, geologist of Colombian origin.

          
In the early days of 2019, meanwhile, China hopes to achieve a much closer third milestone: landing for the first time on the hidden side of the Moon. The non-visible face of our satellite is not dark, but has day and night periods that last about 14 Earth days. The Chang'e-4 probe was launched on December 12 and began to orbit the Moon two days later. The landing module and the Chinese mobile exploration vehicle need light for their solar panels, so it is expected that their landing will occur at the next sunrise, in the first days of 2019.

 

The landing is planned in the Von Kármán crater, 186 kilometers in diameter, which in turn is in the Aitken basin, which, with a diameter of more than 2,500 kilometers, is one of the largest impact craters in the solar system. The mission includes the communication satellite Queqiao for the need to triangulate communications with the Earth, another reason why a landing in this area has never been attempted before. The mission includes several scientific instruments, including a sealed box developed by students that contains the possible first inhabitants of the Moon: worms In the early days of 2019, meanwhile, China hopes to achieve a much closer third milestone: landing for the first time on the hidden side of the Moon. The non-visible face of our satellite is not dark, but has day and night periods that last about 14 Earth days. The Chang'e-4 probe was launched on December 12 and began to orbit the Moon two days later. The landing module and the Chinese mobile exploration vehicle need light for their solar panels, so it is expected that their landing will occur at the next sunrise, in the first days of 2019. The landing is planned in the Von Kármán crater, 186 kilometers in diameter, which in turn is in the Aitken basin, which, with a diameter of more than 2,500 kilometers, is one of the largest impact craters in the solar system. The mission includes the communication satellite Queqiao for the need to triangulate communications with the Earth, another reason why a landing in this area has never been attempted before. The mission includes several scientific instruments, including a sealed box developed by students that contains the possible first inhabitants of the Moon: worms.


 Nuño Domínguez/elpais.es