2019 key spaceflight events
January
NASA's New Horizons spacecraft conducts flyby of Ultima Thule - The New Horizons probe was designed to study Pluto. But after its successful rendezvous with the dwarf planet in 2015, the craft continued speeding along into the Kuiper Belt, a debris-filled region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune. Here, at a distance of about 4 billion miles from Earth, New Horizons will zoom past the icy object 2014 MU69, which is nicknamed Ultima Thule, on Jan. 1. The New Year's rendezvous will make Ultima the most distant object ever visited by a spacecraft. The first high-resolution images will arrive back on New Year’s Day, but it’ll take 20 months for all the data to be sent back to Earth.
China becomes the first nation to land on the far side of the moon - On Dec. 7, China launched its robotic Chang'e 4 spacecraft on the world's first mission to the far side of the moon. The robotic lander and the rover being carried on the craft could touch down as early as Jan. 1 within the South Pole-Aitken basin, one of the moon's largest and oldest impact craters. The Chang'e 4 mission is a prelude to a successor robotic mission, Chang'e 5, which is designed to return lunar samples to Earth.
SpaceX performs first test flight of new crew capsule - SpaceX has been developing its Crew Dragon capsule as a replacement for NASA's space shuttles, which were retired in 2011. The new craft is designed to ferry up to seven astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending NASA's reliance on Russia's Soyuz capsules. During its first uncrewed test flight, which is scheduled for Jan. 17, the capsule will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, dock with the space station and then return to Earth, splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean If it's successful, the Crew Dragon's first test flight with astronauts aboard will follow later in the year.
Israel launches its first spacecraft to the moon - Sometime in the first quarter of 2019, a Tel Aviv-based nonprofit called SpaceIL will launch a 1,322-pound lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. After a two-month journey, the lander will touch down on the moon, with the earliest landing attempt pegged for Feb. 13. If successful, the mission would make SpaceIL the first private entity, and Israel the fourth country, ever to land on the moon.
India launches its second mission to the moon - On Jan. 31, India's space agency will launch its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, sending a robotic orbiter, lander and rover to the moon. Chandrayaan-2, which will touch down at the lunar south pole for the first time in history, will study the moon's mineral content and its topography. India's first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1, launched in October 2008. That mission found evidence of water ice on the moon's surface.
February
British startup launches first set of satellites for all-Earth internet - Sometime in February, a London-based startup called OneWeb will launch the first 10 satellites of what ultimately will be a fleet of 600 telecommunications satellites designed to provide high-speed internet service to every part of the world. The satellites will launch aboard an Arianespace Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.
NASA's InSight lander begins drilling into the surface of Mars - it'll hammer sensors up to five meters (16 feet) into the ground to measure the temperature inside the Red Planet.
March
Boeing conducts first test flight of its CST-100 Starliner capsule - Like SpaceX, Boeing is developing a space capsule to replace NASA's retired space shuttle fleet. Sometime in March, Its CST-100 Starliner will take its maiden flight aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the uncrewed capsule docking with the space station before parachuting back to Earth. If the test is successful, Boeing could conduct crewed test flights of the Starliner in August.
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket returns to space - SpaceX's Falcon Heavy booster completed its maiden launch on Feb. 6, 2018, lifting off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and launching a Tesla Roadster into space. On its second flight, which is planned for early in 2019, the huge rocket will carry 25 individual payloads for the U.S. military and NASA, including weather satellites and a space radiation experiment.
April
NASA's $1.5 billion solar probe zooms past the sun - NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) already broke the record for the fastest human-made object. On November 5, 2018, it flew past the sun at more than 212,000 mph — nearly 120 miles per second (3.3 times as fast as the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter). That's fast enough to fly from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute. But PSP will make two more flybys this year, each closer to the sun and slightly faster than the one before it. The goal is to crack two 60-year-old mysteries: why the sun has a solar wind and dangerous mass ejections of particles, and how the corona — the star's outer atmosphere — can heat up to millions of degrees (about 100 times as hot as the sun's surface temperature).
SpaceX performs a test flight of its Starship vehicle, intended to one day take humans to Mars
May
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit company sends its first rocket to space
June
SpaceX launches first crewed test flight of its Crew Dragon capsule - If the uncrewed test flight of SpaceX's Crew Dragon is successful, the craft will return to space with two spaceflyers aboard. NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will fly Crew Dragon to the space station.
Blue Origin performs its first crewed flight
July
China conducts first test of next-generation crewed spacecraft - China is expected to test the successor to its crewed Shenzhou spacecraft sometime in mid-2019, but a detailed timeline of the mission hasn't yet been revealed. The nation plans to conduct a test launch of a vehicle it calls the New Generation Manned Spacecraft sometime in mid-2019. The test won't send up any people, but eventually China wants to use the vehicle to ferry four to six taikonauts into orbit.
September
NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft swoops down to the surface of the asteroid Bennu in September and tries to collect a sample
October
A new planet-hunting mission from ESA launches between October 15 and November 14 - It’s called CHEOPS (Characterising Exoplanets Satellite), and it’ll look for planets orbiting bright stars close to our Solar System.
December
China launches sample-return mission to the moon - After its Chang'e 4 mission to the lunar far side, China will attempt an even more ambitious lunar mission sometime toward the end of the year. Chang'e 5 will include a lander designed to collect samples of lunar rocks and soil and return them to Earth. If successful, it would be the first time materials from the moon will have been brought back to Earth since 1976.
