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Congratulations you have made it almost all of the way through 2017 there are moments where it felt like maybe we wouldn't next year in space news we've got a lot to look forward to from rockets launching two spacecraft arriving at their destinations two missions coming to an end and like we do around this time every year we wanted to give you a sneak peek there are three missions that you can expect to hear more about in 2018 in late November Mars will receive another visitor NASA's insight mission which will likely launch in May it'll land on Mars to study its interior to learn more about how the rocky planets formed all the rocky planets in our solar system have similar interior structures with separate layers including a crust mantle and core while scientists know the basics of how these layers formed how they separated is still poorly understood but Mars happens to be an ideal size to study how that happened it's massive enough to have experienced most if not all of those fundamental processes but not so massive that it lost evidence of them through years of geologic activity which is what happened to earth insight will be studying the basic properties of Mars's layers like their size thickness density and Composition as well as how heat flows through them it'll also monitor seismic activity the rate of meteorite impacts and how Mars wobbles due to the gravity of its moons and the Sun one of its three instruments will also hammer a probe five meters into Mars's surface much further down than any mission before it insight was originally meant to launch in 2016 but engineers found a leak during testing so it missed its launch window and it took another twenty six months for the Earth and Mars to line up for another shot thankfully in sight past its most recent battery of tests this past November so now it'll be ready to launch in just a few months speaking of delayed missions the finalists of Google's Lunar XPrize have a new deadline March 31st 2018 this competition was announced back in 2007 and a year ago five finalists were selected to compete for the twenty million dollar grand prize to win a team has to land a spacecraft on the moon move it at least 500 meters and transmit a variety of data including videos a panorama and an email and text message the projects have to be almost entirely fun by private investors and it has to happen by the end of March piece of cake right the five final teams are Israel's space IL the USA's moon express India's team Indus Japan's octo and the International team synergy moon space il would be the first group from Israel to land on the moon and if they win they've promised to donate the prize money to advance STEM education in their country to travel the required distance on the moon their Lander will perform a space hop they'll land take off again and then land 500 meters away moon Express is also performing a space hop they have a contract with the company rocket lab and will launch from New Zealand traveling on a rocket that only had its first launch last May synergy moon on the other hand is the only team that can completely send itself all on its own to the moon since one of the companies involved builds and launches its own rockets meanwhile Hawk DOE and team Indus will hitch the same ride to space aboard a rocket from Israel India's space agency hock toes for kilogram Rover has 3d printed wheels and is built out of plastic reinforced with carbon fiber and team indices Rover called ECA for short might be the most adorable of the bunch it even has its own comic strip on the team's website they're planning to land in the same region Apollo 15 did so far it's still too early to say how many of the finalists will make it to the moon by Google's deadline but if any of them clinched that grand prize it'll open up a totally new phase of lunar exploration the jury's still out on XPrize but we do know about one spacecraft that will definitely reach its target next year osiris-rex which will arrive at the asteroid Bennu this August asteroids are left over from when the solar system formed and are basically unchanged records of the solar system from 4.5 billion years ago we can occasionally study them when meteorites hit Earth but osiris-rex will go straight to the source collecting a sample and bringing it home it launched back in September 2016 and has been making its way to Ben U which is located between Earth and Mars ever since when it gets there in August it'll spend a year mapping potential sampling sites before approaching the surface and blasting venue with nitrogen which will dislodge rocks and dust to be captured Venu is a rare primitive type of asteroid that's chock-full of carbon it's expected to have organic molecules and water containing clays and osiris-rex will be able to confirm those hypotheses it'll also study how binu's momentum changes as it rotates and emits heat which will help scientists understand its long-term trajectory that's important because over a century from now been you could hit earth although it's a slim chance so you probably don't need to worry too much about Europe like potential grandkids osiris-rex won't return to Earth until 2023 so like a lot of science missions we'll have to wait a few years before we get all that juicy data but luckily for us there are way more missions running through 2018.
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