Australian Sky & Telescope - 02.2019 - 03.2019

Sun

Mercury

AAstt rr i lt

Parker

Solar

Probe

26 AUSTRALIAN SKY & TELESCOPE February | March 2019

101955 Bennu

Osiris-REX

162173 Ryugu

Hayabusa 2

Scheduled Arrivals

New Horizons(2014 MU 69 )

Here’s our digestof active missions

in 2019. Included are astrophysics,

planetary, solar, space weather

andstellarprojects;weomitthose

that primarily observe Earth. Planet

locations are for January 1; mission

statusesarecurrent(tothebestof

ourknowledge)asoflate2018.Those

orbitingEarthareclassifiedbyprimary

research topic, which is subjective. (All

International Space Station projects

are lumped under ‘ISS’.) Also included

are planned launches for the year.

The big news of 2019 was New

Horizons’flybyof2014MU 69 on New

Year’s day. Also, two private missions

(the unnamed SpaceIL lander and

ALINA)hopetotouchdownonthe

Moon. On a sadder note, the Kepler

spacecraft has run out of fuel. And

when we went to press, it was unclear

if the Opportunity rover had survived

the Martian dust storm.

—Camille M. Carlisle

Late 2018 launches

BepiColombo, launched October(to Mercury)

Chang’e 4, launched December 8(to Moon)

SpaceIL lander, launch due December(to Moon)

2019 scheduled launches

ALINA(to Moon)

Chandrayaan 2(to Moon)

Chang’e 5(to Moon)

Cheops(exoplanets, Earth orbit)

Solar Orbiter(to Sun)

Spektr-RG(X-rays, to L 2 )

Not to scale

Venus

Akatsuki

Moon

IN ORBIT

Artemis

Chang’e 5 T1

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

ON SURFACE

Chang’e 3

MOON-EARTH L 2 POINT

Queqiao (with Longjiang-2)

Mars

IN ORBIT

Mars Express

Mars Odyssey

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

MAVEN

MOM (Mangalyaan)

Trace Gas Orbiter

ON SURFACE

Opportunity

Curiosity

Insight

Earth-like

Solar Orbit

Kepler

Spitzer

Stereo A

Inner Solar System

INFOGRAPHIC