GLOBAL SPACE FLIGHTS (Syllabus: GS Paper 3 - Sci and Tech)

Context: In 2023, space exploration achieves remarkable milestones with India successfully executing a lunar landing, NASA delving into asteroid studies, and SpaceX rapidly advancing its innovations. 

Global Space Flights in 2023

• Europa Clipper: NASA’s Europa Clipper, which will explore one of Jupiter’s largest moons, Europa. 

oEuropa is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, with a surface made of ice.

• VIPER to search for water on the Moon: VIPEr is a robot the size of a golf cart that NASA will use to explore the Moon’s south pole in late 2024.
• JAXA’s Martian Moon exploration mission: To study the Mars moon, Phobos and Deimos.
• Chandrayaan-3: India became the 4th country in the world to soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon.

o1st spacecraft to land near the South Pole of the Moon.

• Aditya L1: It is India’s 1st mission to study the Sun and space weather.

oIt will travel around 1.5 million kilometres away from the planet to the 1st Lagrange point, or L1, between the Sun and the Earth.