Author: Michael Roston / Source: New York Times
A SpaceX Falcon rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., earlier this year. Craig Bailey/Florida Today, via Associated Press
Just as we’ve caught our breaths from 2018’s exciting and very busy year in space and astronomy, 2019 is already off to a rapid start.
Before we finish the first week of this year, we’ll see a Chinese probe landing on the moon, an eclipse and NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft complete a flyby of the most distant object ever visited in the solar system.However much you love space and astronomy, we know it can be challenging to keep on top of the latest out-of-this-world news. We’ve put dates for these events and more on The Times’s Astronomy and Space Calendar, which has been updated for 2019. Subscribe on your personal digital calendar, and you’ll be automatically synced with our updates all year long.
Below are some of the launches, space science and other events we anticipate. You’ll find these and others added to your calendar as their dates approach.
The moon will get some visitors
The year is set to start with a moon landing by China’s Chang’e-4 mission. The spacecraft launched in December and reached lunar orbit four and a half days later. If its lander and rover succeed, Chang’e-4 will be the first spacecraft to make a soft, or intact, landing on the moon’s far side — the side that always faces away from Earth.
The Chinese spacecraft may be the first of a series of lunar landings.
An Israeli company, SpaceIL, is scheduled to send a lander to the moon in February. Originally, SpaceIL was one of four finalists in Google’s Lunar X Prize. But the prize went unclaimed when none of the companies were able to meet a launch deadline of March 31, 2018. If the Israeli mission succeeds, it would make that country only the fourth to complete a soft landing on the moon, after the United States, the Soviet Union and China.
But Israel could get beaten to that distinction by India, which may launch Chandrayaan-2, the nation’s first moon lander and rover, as soon as late January. (Chandrayaan-1, an orbiter, launched in 2008.) The mission was expected to launch last year, but met with delays.
This lunar activity may serve as a setup for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, when humans first walked on the moon. And China has the opportunity to bookend 2019 with a second moon mission, Chang’e-5, which could land on the moon late…
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