Starship, Artemis and the race to low-Earth orbit: What to watch in space news in 2022

Speaker 1: SpaceX is sending the Starship into orbit. NASA is launching its biggest rocket ever. And blue origin wants to sell you a letter box in space. Space is the exciting place to be right now, but it's getting pretty busy up there. So let's break it down. Here's my list of the biggest launches and space to watch in 2022. Speaker 1: If you're watching this, then I know you are probably already a big space [00:00:30] fan, but in case the past year kind of washed over you because of everything going on out there. Then here is a quick recap. NASA landed the perseverance Rover on Mars and launched ever space helicopter, ingenuity. China successfully landed the Zong Rover on Mars. A Cyrus Rex bumped into an asteroid to collect space dust. The Lucy space probe launched on its 12 year tour of eight asteroids and the dart mission launched on its asteroid. Smashing planetary defense mission. Jeff Bezos flew to the edge of space for [00:01:00] blue origin. Richard Branson did the same for virgining galactic. Elon Musk didn't fly to space, but SpaceX did launch its first mission crew entirely by private citizens as well as two commercial crew missions and almost a thousand styling satellites. Okay. There's no doubt from all of that, that where in a new space race, but what about the year ahead? Speaker 1: Well, let's start with SpaceX headed by time magazine, 2021 person of the year and owner of this haircut. Elon Musk [00:01:30] SpaceX's Starship is one of the biggest space stories to watch in 2022. Quite literally, this massive heavy lift rocket is being built as the future of space travel capable of fairing, huge payloads into space and coming back to land on earth to be used again after plenty of test launches and crashes over the past few years, SpaceX is planning the first orbital flight for Starship in 2022 that's. If the company doesn't go bankrupt first [00:02:00] in a leak email published at the end of last year, Elon said Starship engine production was a disaster and SpaceX faced the quote genuine risk of bankruptcy. If we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks in 2022. So the first orbital flight for Starship is going to be a huge test and we still don't have a confirmed flight date. Speaker 1: It come as early as January or February, but SpaceX still needs to get clearance from the federal aviation administration to fly [00:02:30] as for flying Starship 26 times this year. Well, let's just say that sounds ambitious, but SpaceX isn't the only company doing some heavy lifting in the heavy lift rocket game. Blue origin is working on a star, a competitor known as new Glen, but its first launch has also been delayed in February. Last year. The company said new Glen wouldn't launch until the final quarter of 2022 blew origin blamed the delay on the fact that it missed out on a lucrative contract with the [00:03:00] us space force. That contract went to SpaceX and United launch Alliance, United launch Alliance. Well that's the other big player in the commercial rocket game. It's joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Boeing and the maker of the Atlas five and Delta family of rockets. Speaker 1: You might recognize those name from some of NASA's launches, but ELA is also working on a NextGen heavy lift rocket called the Vulcan for taking military payloads into orbit. The original Vulcan launch was scheduled for this year, but you [00:03:30] guessed it delays this time with the Vulcans rocket engines, which are made by blue origin. Those issues mean it might not law launch in 2022. And if all that wasn't enough. There's another plucky upstart on the scene. Rocket lab, which is building the neutron reusable rocket founded by New Zealand, Peter Beck. The company has already started building prototypes, using a process called automated fiber placement, which is similar to 3d printing. Rocket lab says [00:04:00] its first test fire of its rocket engines is due in 2022. So watch this space, okay. I'm sorry about that. Let's head to low earth orbit 20 years after the first crude mission to the ISS, the international space station is about to welcome its first entirely private mission of astronauts. Speaker 1: The mission is being run by Axiom space with transport help from SpaceX's crew dragon capsule set to launch in 2022 fun fact, [00:04:30] each of those astronauts paid a reported $55 million for their tickets. Oh, and while we're on the topic of crew dragon Boeing's competitor, the star liner has faced a bunch of LA, but this year we're expecting to see a second UNC crew test of that commercial capsule it's worth noting the ISS. Isn't the only space station making news. China is building a new space station in low earth orbit. It's called Yong, which means heavenly palace. And it's actually the third stay built by China. [00:05:00] The third crashed to earth in 2018 and the second was deliberately de orbited in 2019. But China has high hopes for the third gen gong. It's already hosted its first group of tigers. That's taken from the Mandarin word for space. Speaker 1: They hosted a science class which aired on Chinese state owned media. Now the core module, the station is set to be finished by the end of this year with two more modules planned to house research and experiments, but it's not [00:05:30] just governments claiming a stake in low earth orbit, blue origin and Sierra space have announced plans for a privately run space station known as orbital reef. They're building it as a quote mixed use business park in space with transport and logistics space habitation and an onboard crew. They also say orbital reef will let anyone have their own address in space. Now I love that these companies took literally the most exciting thing, space exploration [00:06:00] and paired it with the most boring phrase known to man a mixed use business park. Also big question. How do I collect my mail from a space address either way, this one won't be finished in 2022, it's set to be up and running in the second half of this to decade. Speaker 1: But one to watch if commercial space travel is one of the biggest space stories of 2022, then Luna exploration is the other big one. So let's talk moon landings. The big news here is NASA's [00:06:30] Artis mission, which is sending astronauts, including the first woman back to the moon for the first time, since the Apollo program that said to happen in 2025, hopefully the date was originally 20, 24, but NASA pushed that back last year. Still we should see the first flight of NASA's massive space launch system this year, potentially as early as February, I had a chance to see the SLS in Florida late last year. And I have to, it is very impressive up close, [00:07:00] but it's not just NASA eyeing. The moon. The whole world wants in Korea is launching the Korea path. Find to Luna orbiter around the moon. Russia is launching the Luna 25 mission its first mission to the moon since Luna 24 in 1976, Japan is launch it's smart Lander for investigating moon or slim spacecraft. Speaker 1: India is having another crack at lunar exploration with the Chandre three mission. The first Chandre orbiter was critical [00:07:30] to discovering water on the moon, but the second mission crashed landed in 2019. Now I've lost count here, but launched windows for all of these missions open in 2022 plus we'll still have space tourism after three crude flights to the edge of space. Last year, blue origin says it has several more planned this year. Virgin galactic should be in the mix there too though. It is delaying flights until the end of 2022. So it can refurbish its space craft following Richard [00:08:00] Branson's joy ride last year. And then of course there's all the science missions that we're expecting this year in August. NASAs is launching the psyche mission to go and investigate a metal asteroid between Mars and Jupiter in late September, the dart mission is going to crush into its asteroid near earth to see if it can knock it slightly out of its orbit. And of course my favorite weather satellite, the goes tea is launching into geostationary orbit. It's all happening people. Oh, and of [00:08:30] course don't forget. We're getting our very first images down from NASA's most powerful telescope ever. The James web space, telescope fingers cross. So if you're a big space nerd and aren't we all, then we've got you covered. CNET will be across all these big events. We'll be here with live streams of those late night. Rocket launches, explainers on the big exciting missions Speaker 2: And all of the coverage. You need to make sense of the developments happening in space and here on [00:09:00] earth, we have got a very big year ahead in the words of the nineties, Danish pop classic Barbie girl, we're just getting started.