Space events 2019: Here's what NASA and SpaceX have in store for next year
New Delhi : It's time to bid good bye to the year 2018. The year has been an extra-ordinary one with blood moon show, meteor shower, special spaceship launch and so on. For now, it is time to talk about the 2019 calendar which is full of major events in spaceflight, planetary science, and astronomy.
Let's talk about what is in store with NASA and SpaceX for our Earth in 2019
- SpaceX and Boeing hope to launch NASA astronauts inside commercial spaceships for the first time next year.
- Elon Musk may also test-launch his rocket company's "Starship" spacecraft.
- China intends to return its first lunar soil samples to Earth.
- Meteor showers, a total lunar and solar eclipse, and other night-sky events will also grace our planet.
NASA is planning to use the nuclear-powered probe to visit an icy body called Ultima Thule, or 2014 MU69. The object is in the Kuiper Belt, about 4 billion miles from Earth, and researchers think it's a peanut-shaped rock.
Overnight on December 31, 2018, on New Year Eve and into Januray 1, New Horizons will fly by, study, and photograph the mysterious object. Scientists estimate that it's perhaps 20 miles long and 12 miles wide. New Horizon's flyby will make Ultima Thule the most distant object ever visited by humanity.
