2024 Space Missions to the Moon and Mars | Newsround

And here we go. Three, two, one, and liftoff. One of the biggest space missions coming up this year is Artemis two. It’s US space agency, NASA’s first moon mission in more than 50 years. The crew of four astronauts are expected to blast off in November, and it involves the first woman and first person of color on a moon mission. They won’t step foot on the moon, though, but travel around it, testing the route to pave the way for future and the lunar landings. Artemis is, too, is more than a mission to the moon and back. It’s more than a mission that has to happen before we send people to the surface of the moon. It is the next step on the journey that gets humanity to Mars. The one thing I’m most excited about is that we are going to carry your excitement, your aspirations, your dreams with us on this mission, Artemis two your mission. Sticking with moons, Japan has an ambitious plan to explore the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. The mission will investigate both moons and collect samples from Phobos to bring back to Earth. Scientists aren’t yet sure whether the moon surfaces are hard enough for a spacecraft to land on. But if everything goes to plan, the spacecraft should arrive in a year’s time and the samples could return to Earth by 2029. And finally, 2024 is also expected to be a big year for solar storms. That’s when the sun shoots out a large amount of energy and radiation. And there are explosions on the surface of the sun they’re completely normal and harmless to us on the ground. But the energy fired out from the sun’s surface can disrupt satellites and interrupt technology. Back here on Earth, solar storms are predicted to increase in 2024. As we approach the phase in the sun’s cycle known as the solar maximum. The good news is these storms produced stunning auroras, those pink, purple, green and blue lines we see in the northern hemisphere and called northern lights or southern lights where we see them from the southern hemisphere. While this all sounds out of this world, keep your eyes on the stars.