NASA is planning to launch its most high-risk endeavor in decades on the Artemis mission in 2024, which will utilize the agency’s new Space Launch System (SLS) to send a crewed Orion spacecraft on a trip to the moon. This will mark the first time humans have visited the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.
In addition, NASA is also planning a number of boundary-pushing space missions for 2024, including the Psyche mission which will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name, and the Europa Clipper mission, which will send a spacecraft to orbit Jupiter’s moon Europa in search of potential life.
The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) mission is also scheduled for launch in 2024, which will look for exoplanets in our galaxy and further our understanding of dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe.
Other missions currently planned for 2024 include the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a mission to deflect an asteroid, and the Nearer-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam) mission, which is tasked with surveying the entire near-Earth object sky every six months.
Finally, NASA’s Lucy mission is currently slated for a 2024 launch, with the goal of studying Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, providing valuable insight into the formation of our Solar System.
