The science landscape for 2023 seems to be full of adventures. Moon landing, asteroid study, new generation vaccine development, deep missions are just some of the ingredients on the year’s menu. This year will see the first civilian trip to the Moon, with 11 people embarking on a 6-day private space flight aboard the SpaceX rocket Starship. 2023 will also see revolutions in medicine where some of the advanced gene-editing technologies will get authenticated and help finding novel therapeutic leads to address unmet needs.
Exploring Jupiter
In April, the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice). This is due to reach the planet in July 2031. It will spend three years exploring Jupiter and three of its icy moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. The mission will enter into orbit around Jupiter and perform numerous flybys of its large icy moons.
The first orbital test flight of the Starship spacecraft is likely to happen in 2023. Starship will be the largest spacecraft capable of carrying humans from Earth to destinations in the space. It will be the most powerful launch vehicle, capable of lifting 100 metric tonnes of cargo to low Earth orbit.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will focus on science experiments in 2023 with dedicated missions to the Sun and the moon. Chandrayaan-3 mission will be a follow up to the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which did not achieve a soft landing on the Moon. The mission will include a landing module and a rover to explore the Moon.
Vaccine Building, Gene Editing
Many mRNA vaccines are in various stages of development after their successful use during the Covid-19 pandemic. BioNTech in Mainz, Germany, is slated to kickstart first-in-human trials for mRNA vaccines against malaria, tuberculosis and genital herpes. Trials are also underway for these vaccine candidates for being used to treat the virus that cause genital herpes and shingles.
The year may also witness the first approval of a CRISPR-gene-editing therapy. The treatment is being developed by the Massachusetts companies Vertex Pharmaceuticals in Boston and CRISPR Therapeutics in Cambridge. It is done by collecting a person’s own stem cells and using the technology to edit the faulty gene. The approach is also being used to treat people with severe forms of a related genetic disorders.
Asteroid Mapping
The Psyche mission targeted for October 2023 will travel to the iron-rich asteroid Psyche between Mars and Jupiter. The composition and other vitals of the asteroid will enable the scientists to get a better clue on the formation of the rocky planets of the solar system.
In another asteroid journey, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx is on its flight back after taking samples from the asteroid Bennu. A capsule containing samples of dust from Bennu is slated to be dropped back to the Earth in September 2023. OSIRIS-Rex will swing by the Earth and drop the sample, containing 2.1 ounces of material from the surface of Bennu, at the Utah Test and Training Range.
Nuclear Waste Storage
The world’s first nuclear waste storage facility is slated to start operating this year in Olkiluoto, an island off the southwest coast of Finland. The Finnish government approved construction of the deep-underground repository in 2015, to safely dispose of spent nuclear fuel. The €3-billion (US$3.2-billion) facility will start storing waste in a deep underground repository and will pack up to 6,500 tonnes of uranium into copper canisters.
The US and the French oceanographers have collaborated to develop the Surface Water and Topography(SWOT) satellite mission to make the first global survey of the Earth’s surface water, observe the fine details of the ocean’s surface topography and measure how much water bodies change over time. SWOT is slated to be launched in 2023.
Astral Beauty
There will be two solar eclipses in 2023. Space enthusiasts will soon get a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a stunning comet zooming past Earth. The E3 comet — officially known as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) — was first discovered in March 2022. The comet is what astronomers call a long-period comet. This label is applied whenever a comet’s orbit takes longer than 200 years.
(Edited by : C H Unnikrishnan)
