2024 in spaceflight

The year 2024 is expected to exceed 2023's 223 orbital launches. So far, the year saw the successful first launch of Vulcan Centaur, Gravity-1, and notably the third developmental launch of SpaceX's Starship – IFT-3. Additionally, the final launch of a Delta family rocket occurred in April 2024 with a Delta IV Heavy. Following 2020s' trend, it is expected that many more privately-developed launch vehicles will feature a maiden launch in 2024.

2024 in spaceflight
IM-1 Odysseus
SLIM taken by LEV-2 Sora-Q
Orbital launches
First1 January
Last18 April
Total76
Successes73
Failures1
Partial failures2
Catalogued70
National firsts
Space traveller
Rockets
Maiden flights
Retirements
Crewed flights
Orbital3
Orbital travellers11
Suborbital1
Suborbital travellers6
Total travellers17

In terms of other national-level scientific space missions, NASA's Europa Clipper probe, NASA's EscaPADE probe, ESA's Hera probe, and NISAR Earth observation satellite are planned to launch in 2024. NASA's Ingenuity helicopter ended operation in January due to damages to rotor blades after its 72nd flight. This year is also expected to see many lunar landing attempts. JAXA's SLIM and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 have successfully survived soft-landings on the Moon but were tipped over during final moments of descent. CNSA's Chang'e 6 is expected to attempt humanity's first lunar sample return from the far side of the Moon in May.

Two crewed space stations, the International Space Station (ISS) and Tiangong, are in operation in 2024. In terms of crewed missions, the ISS will be visited by Expedition 70, 71, and 72, while Shenzhou 18 and 19 will visit Tiangong. The ISS will also host private crews of Axiom Mission 3 and Axiom Mission 4. The ISS is also expected to see docking of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser Demo-1.

This year saw Alper Gezeravcı becoming the first Turkish astronaut, as a crew of Axiom Mission 3. Belarus also had its first citizen reach space, when cosmonaut Marina Vasilevskaya launched on Soyuz MS-25 (not counting Pyotr Klimuk, Vladimir Kovalyonok and Oleg Novitsky who were Soviet citizens of Belarusian origin when they traveled to space).

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.