12/30/2021 – Ephemeris – Looking forward to some space events in 2022

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, December 30th. Today the Sun will be up for 8 hours and 51 minutes, setting at 5:11, and it will rise tomorrow at 8:20. The Moon, 2 days before new, will rise at 6 tomorrow morning.

If you thought 2021 was an active one in space, 2022 looks to be as exciting. The James Webb Space Telescope will continue to deploy itself as it journeys to reach it’s L2 halo orbit. It should become operational by mid-year. The launch of the uncrewed Artemis-1 mission to, and around the Moon, has been pushed back a month to no earlier than March 12th, because of having to swap out a control computer for one of its main engines. The launch of the Psyche probe to the mostly metallic asteroid of the same name will occur in August by a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on a four-year journey to orbit this unique asteroid. And NASA’s DART spacecraft is scheduled to crash into the tiny Dimorphos asteroid to test a deflection method in late September.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EST, UT – 5 hours). They may be different for your location.

Addendum

James Webb Space Telescope trajectory to L2 with some milestones of deployment. “ISIM” stands for Integrated Scientific Instruments Module. Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).

Artemis-1 orbital plan. Click on the image to enlarge it. Credit NASA.

Psyche spacecraft at the asteroid Psyche. Credit: NASA.

Schematic of the DART mission shows the impact on the moonlet of asteroid (65803) Didymos. Post-impact observations from Earth-based optical telescopes and planetary radar would, in turn, measure the change in the moonlet’s orbit about the parent body.
Credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab