Kennedy Space Center expects a busy 2024

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is about to have another busy year, with momentum from a busy 2023 continuing into the new year. Upcoming missions include missions to the moon, more crew and cargo flights to the International Space Station, and several upgrade projects throughout the spaceport.

NASA’s first CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program with the Astrobotics Peregrine lunar lander will begin work in 2024 after the first launch of the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket. These missions will help the agency develop the capabilities needed to explore the Moon beneath Artemis before sending astronauts to the lunar surface.

Another CLPS mission is scheduled to launch early this year aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and will send the Intuitive Machines Nova-C lander to a landing site in the lunar south pole region. The mission will carry NASA payloads focused on communications and navigation nodes for plume-surface interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and future autonomous navigation technologies.

Artemis II is the first manned test flight of NASA’s Artemis program to the moon, and its development continues across Kennedy. SLS (Space Launch System) hardware, including twin solid rocket boosters and the 212-foot-tall core stage for the Artemis II mission, will begin stacking and integrating in the Vehicle Assembly Building in the coming months, The team will then begin a series of pre-launch tests. The core stage of Artemis III is also being processed.

The Artemis 2 Orion crew module and service module will continue to undergo pre-launch processing at Kennedy’s Neil Armstrong Operations and Inspection Building, as well as Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 NASA The crew module of the agency’s initial mission will send the next batch of humans to the lunar surface.

NASA and its commercial partners Boeing and SpaceX will fly three Commercial Crew Program missions from Florida’s Space Coast in preparation for another busy year at the International Space Station in 2024. Teams are preparing for short-term crewed flight tests of the Boeing CST-100 Starliner no earlier than April. At the same time, NASA and SpaceX will continue to perform crew rotation missions to the orbiting laboratory, with Crew-8 expected to be performed no earlier than mid-February and Crew-9 in mid-August.

Other crewed missions to the space station include SpaceX and Axiom Spaces’ short-term Axiom Mission 3 and Axiom Mission 4 private astronaut missions.

SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn, the second private short-term orbital flight, will also launch from Kennedy, carrying four people scheduled to attempt the first commercial spacewalk.

In addition to crewed flights, the agency’s three commercial resupply services missions are scheduled to launch from Kennedy next year, carrying thousands of pounds of supplies on the first flights of SpaceX’s Dragon cargo spacecraft Northrop Grummans Cygnus and Sierra Spaces’ cargo spaceplane Dream Chaser. Provide supplies, equipment and scientific investigations to the orbiting laboratory.

NASA Launch Services, based in Kennedy, has a number of scientific and CubeSat missions expected to fly on commercial rockets next year. They represent some of the agency’s most complex robotics and science missions, as well as smaller cost-effective missions and missions sponsored by NASA’s CubeSat launch program.

The first of the three major missions is NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosols, Clouds, Ocean Ecosystems) spacecraft, which will be launched early next year on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. PACE’s scientific goals include expanding ocean color, atmospheric aerosol and cloud data records for use in Earth system and climate research.

GOES-U (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-U), scheduled to launch in April on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is the fourth and final satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R series of advanced geostationary weather observation satellites. The agency plans to launch the Europa Clipper mission in October aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket, which will survey Jupiter’s moon Europa to determine whether it has conditions suitable for life.

Among the small spacecraft and CubeSat missions scheduled to launch in 2024, there are two dedicated PREFIRE (Polar Radiation Energy in Infrared Experiments) launches aboard Rocket Labs Electron, designed to give researchers a more accurate picture of entry and exit The energy of the earth. The Blue Origin New Glenn rocket will carry NASA’s EscaPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer) mission, which will send two spacecraft to study solar wind energy and momentum through Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere. .

While Florida’s Space Coast is expected to host nearly 100 launches next year, which will likely match the record pace of 2023, other things to watch will be upgrades and sustainability efforts around the spaceport.

The Indian River Bridge construction project will open the first of two spans in June 2023, and the Utility Energy Services Contract’s Solar Site 6 project is expected to be completed and fully operational next year.

Restoration and beautification efforts throughout Kennedy also include consideration of several sites for development into natural wildflower prairie. This spring, the Spaceport Integrations sustainability team will launch the Arbor project in Spaceport. It will focus on planting native Florida trees and a sapling from the Artemis Moon Tree Project on the fitness trail near Operations Support Building II to provide shade, benefit wildlife and help improve air quality.

The historical marker sponsored by NASA and the Florida State Department will be installed at the site of the original JFK headquarters building in early 2024, making it the first historical marker within the JFK Security Zone.

As 2023 comes to an end, the Kennedy Space Center is preparing to support more groundbreaking missions that will expand human understanding of Earth and the solar system while protecting local ecosystems and natural resources.