NASA’S PLANETARY SCIENCE DIVISION: KEY EXPLORATION EVENTS IN 2022

The Planetary Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate currently has a portfolio of 38 missions in various stages of planning, development, and operation, including several missions led by international space agencies on which NASA is a partner. The targets for these missions span the full breadth of the Solar System—from BepiColombo currently heading towards Mercury, all the way out to New Horizons that has explored Pluto and continues its journey through the Kuiper Belt. This talk will focus on key mission events coming up in 2022, including the launch of the Psyche mission heading to explore a metallic asteroid (along with its rideshare mission, Janus that will visit two binary asteroids) as well as the European Space Agency’s ExoMars mission that will see the Rosalind Franklin Rover land on the Martian surface to explore for signs of past life. 2022 will also see NASA returning to the surface of the Moon with robotic spacecraft for the first time in 50 years as part of the innovative Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Program, through which NASA payloads will be delivered on commercially provided landers. In late September, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will reach its spectacular finale as it impacts a small asteroid (Dimorphos)—humanity’s first full-scale test of the kinetic impactor planetary defense technique.