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Starship, Europa Clipper and more: The top 10 spaceflight stories of 2024
News
By Julian Dossett published 2 days ago
This year was one for the history books.

a large cylindrical rocket comes in for a landing next to a seaside
launch tower

SpaceX's Starship Flight 5 Super Heavy booster approaches its launch
tower for the first-ever landing and capture at the pad after launching
on a suborbital test flight from Starbase in South Texas on Oct. 13,
2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
Jump to:
SpaceX makes serious progress with its Starship megarocket
Pioneering moon landings
Boeing Starliner's launches astronauts for the 1st time, and drama ensues China's Chang'e 6 mission brings samples home from the moon's far side
SpaceX's Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission
Europa Clipper launches toward Jupiter's intriguing ocean moon
Mars helicopter Ingenuity says goodbye
ULA debuts its powerful new Vulcan Centaur rocket
NASA cancels VIPER moon rover mission
Oleg Kononenko breaks record for most time spent in space
Historians will look back on 2024 as a special year for spaceflight.

From SpaceX plucking a huge rocket out of the sky to the first
privately funded spacewalk to the launch of a $5 billion mission to
study an ice-covered ocean moon, this year held many record-breaking achievements and advances that brought humanity ever closer to exploring
the stars.

Here are the top 10 spaceflight stories from 2024.

1) SpaceX makes serious progress with its Starship megarocket
SpaceX made history when it caught the returning first-stage Super Heavy booster from its 400-foot-tall (122 meters) Starship vehicle directly
atop the launch mount, effectively furthering the possibilities of
reusability in the spaceflight industry.

The historic catch occurred during Starship's fifth test flight on Oct.
13, and the road to get there was a long one. After two test flights in
2023 — both which ended in explosions — Starship's Integrated Flight
Test-3 (IFT-3) launched from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas on
the morning of March 14. The flight saw the world's most powerful rocket
reach orbital speed for the first time.

Starship's fourth flight, which launched on June 6, saw further
improvements, with the Super Heavy booster making a soft splashdown in
the ocean. But it was Flight 5 that changed the game for reusable
rockets. After lifting off, Super Heavy came back to Starbase, where it
was caught in mid-air by the launch tower's "chopstick" arms, an
unprecedented maneuver that almost looked like something out of a sci-fi
film.

SpaceX managed one more Starship flight this year, on Nov. 19. While the company planned a repeat of the booster-catching feat, Super Heavy
instead splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, due to a communications
issue with the launch tower. This year, SpaceX is eager for more
launches, with 25 Starship flights apparently planned for 2025.

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Read more: SpaceX catches giant Starship booster with 'chopsticks' on
historic Flight 5 rocket launch and landing (video)

a gold and silver spacecraft descends toward the lunar surface

Intuitive Machines' Odysseus moon lander snapped this photo during its
descent toward the moon on Feb. 22, 2024. (Image credit: Intuitive
Machines via X)
2) Pioneering moon landings
This year, we witnessed a pair of moon landings for the history books.
On Feb. 15, Intuitive Machines' hexagonal-cylinder-shaped lander —
dubbed Odysseus (of Trojan War fame) — launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9
rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

On the evening of Feb. 22, the robotic lander touched down near the
moon's south pole, making it the first U.S. vehicle to soft-land on the
moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Odysseus was also the first
private lander to ever achieve the feat. Onboard were 12 payloads from
NASA and commercial companies, designed for a range of tasks on the
moon's surface.

Also this year, Japan became the fifth nation to touch down on the moon,
doing so on Jan. 19. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s
robotic Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) probe managed to land
within 328 feet (100 meters) of JAXA's planned site. Nicknamed "moon
sniper," SLIM's precise landing was a significant achievement for a
lunar probe.

Despite the moon lander's precision, SLIM landed upside-down due to an
engine failure during the descent. This created an issue for the probe's
solar panels, which were unable to give power to SLIM in the hours
following the landing, because they were in a shadow. Although the
lander did hibernate for periods, JAXA was able to make contact with
SLIM until April, and they finally declared SLIM dead in August.

3) Boeing Starliner's launches astronauts for the 1st time, and drama ensues After some delays and scrapped launches, on June 5 Boeing's Starliner
capsule, designed as an astronaut taxi for NASA, launched from Cape
Canaveral Space Force Station — the first time humans rode an Atlas
rocket into space since Gordon Cooper's Mercury-Atlas 9 mission in 1963.

The Starliner capsule launched with veteran NASA astronauts Barry
"Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams, who are both former U.S. Navy test
pilots. This was also the first time astronauts launched atop an Atlas V.

After one failed docking attempt, Starliner made it to the International
Space Station (ISS) for a June 6 rendezvous, where Wilmore and Williams
were scheduled to spend about a week running tests. But Starliner ran
into issues with its thrusters, as well as helium leaks that were found
after the capsule reached orbit.

NASA and Boeing extended the capsule's ISS stay to look into the
thruster issue. Eventually, NASA decided against having Williams and
Wilmore return on Starliner, deeming it too risky. So, on Sept. 7,
Starliner returned to Earth — landing at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico — without the astronauts onboard, who still remain in orbit on
the ISS.

Now, Williams and Wilmore are scheduled to return to earth no earlier
than March 2025. The Starliner astronauts will come home aboard a SpaceX
Dragon capsule, the one that's flying the company's Crew-10 mission.

white-suited technicians remove a silver box from a gold spacecraft
inside a white-walled room

Technicians remove the samples collected on the moon's far side from the
return capsule of the Chang'e 6 lunar mission. (Image credit: CCTV)
4) China's Chang'e 6 mission brings samples home from the moon's far side China's robotic Chang'e 6 mission returned samples from the moon's far
side to Earth for the first time ever this year. Chang'e 6 launched on
May 3 from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on the island of Hainan,
located in southern China. Consisting of four elements — a lunar
orbiter, a lander, an ascender and an Earth-reentry module, the Chang'e
6 moon probe rode a Long March 5 rocket into orbit.

On June 1, the Chang'e 6 lander touched down in the southern pocket of
the unexplored Apollo crater in the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin to
scoop and drill unique samples, which were then transferred to the
ascender and shot back up into the moon's orbit. The next step was
transferring the samples between the ascender and its orbital module.
The rendezvous was successful, and the two spacecraft docked on June 6, transferred the samples, and then separated again.

Next, the Chang'e 6 orbiter conducted its moon-to-Earth transfer
injection maneuver, so the 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of lunar samples
could come back to Earth. The sample capsule landed June 25 under
parachutes in Inner Mongolia's grasslands. After scientists conducted an initial study of the lunar samples Chang'e collected, they found the
samples have a lower density compared to other returned moon material.
Further analysis could be important to understanding more about the
moon's origin and evolution.

Related: The moon: Everything you need to know about Earth's companion

an astronaut in a white spacesuit is halfway out of a space capsule in
oribt, silhouetted against earth in the background

Polaris Dawn commander Jared Isaacman is silhouetted against Earth as he becomes the first private astronaut to perform a spacewalk on Sept. 12,
2024. (Image credit: SpaceX)
5) SpaceX's Polaris Dawn private astronaut mission
SpaceX made history with the Polaris Dawn mission, which conducted the first-ever private spacewalk. Backed by billionaire Jared Isaacman, the
Polaris Program's inaugural mission was originally scheduled for an Aug.
26 launch, which was delayed for additional preflight checks, and then
delayed again due to unfavorable launch and return conditions.

The mission finally launched on Sept. 10 with the Crew Dragon capsule Resilience riding a Falcon 9 rocket to reach an elliptical orbit around
Earth. On the first day of Polaris Dawn's five-day mission, Resilience
reached a maximum altitude of 870 miles (1,401 kilometers) on its first
day in space, higher than any other crewed Earth-orbiting spacecraft in history.

Aside from Isaacman, the crew consisted of former U.S. Air Force
lieutenant colonel Scott Poteet, the mission's pilot, and SpaceX
engineers Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon. Using new SpaceX-designed
spacesuits, Isaacman partially exited Resilience for a spacewalk on
Sept. 12, followed by Gillis a few minutes later.

The mission also completed science and engineering experiments,
including testing the internet in space by communication with SpaceX's
Starlink network. On Sept. 15, the Polaris Dawn crew capsule splashed
down safely off Florida's coast in the Gulf of Mexico. During the
mission, Gillis and Menon set the record for highest-flying women,
breaking the previous record set by NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan
during the STS-31 space shuttle mission in 1990.

6) Europa Clipper launches toward Jupiter's intriguing ocean moon
NASA's highly anticipated Europa Clipper mission to the icy Jupiter
ocean moon Europa launched Oct. 14, riding a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket
into the sky from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The $5 billion Europa Clipper represents years of work and ambition to find out if the far-off
moon could possibly support life.

Scientists think that a liquid ocean of saltwater sits beneath Europa's
surface of ice. The solar-powered orbiter — which is one of the most sophisticated spacecraft ever built — will be the first to investigate
the habitability of an ocean world. After using the gravity of Mars and
Earth as a slingshot, Europa Clipper is targeted to reach its
destination in 2030 after traveling 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion
kilometers).

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón wrote a poem, which is engraved in the
poet's handwriting on the spacecraft's vault plate, to commemorate the occasion. In November, the orbiter successfully deployed two scientific instruments, the magnetometer's boom and antennas for Europa Clipper's
radar instrument, which will remain extended for the duration of the
journey to the Jupiter moon.

7) Mars helicopter Ingenuity says goodbye
The robotic helicopter landed on Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover in February 2021, tasked with completing five technology-demonstrating
flights on the Red Planet. Seventy-two flights later, NASA finally said
goodbye to Ingenuity on April 16 of this year after its rotors sustained
damage during a hard landing on the rough Martian terrain.

The 4-pound (1.8 kg) Ingenuity became the first aircraft to ever fly on
the Red Planet, which is no small feat considering Mars's thin
atmosphere. After it became clear that the rotocopter would outlast five flights and its mission was extended, Ingenuity began serving as a scout
for Perseverance.

Ingenuity proved that drones could fly in Mars' atmosphere, paving the
way for potential future Martian aircraft. And even though the
helicopter is no longer airborne, its avionics battery sensors remain functional. On Dec. 11, mission team members said that Ingenuity can
live a second life as a kind of weather station by recording telemetry
and taking images to store onboard.

Related: After accident on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter could live
on as a weather station for 20 years

a white rocket launches into a night sky

ULA's Vulcan Centaur launches the Peregrine moon lander on Jan. 8, 2024.
(Image credit: ULA)
8) ULA debuts its powerful new Vulcan Centaur rocket
This year saw the first two certification launches for United Launch
Alliance's (ULA) new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which is outfitted with a
pair of BE-4 first-stage engines built by Blue Origin. With the goal of replacing ULA's older Atlas and Delta rockets, Vulcan Center made its
first liftoff on Jan. 8 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. It
carried a robotic lunar lander called Peregrine, which was built by the Pittsburgh company Astrobotic.

While the launch went off without a hitch, Peregrine ran into trouble
due to a faulty helium pressure control valve and never made it to the
moon. The lunar lander wandered through space for more than a week
before being steered back for a controlled destruction in Earth's
atmosphere.

Vulcan's second certification launch, which occurred on Oct. 4, flew
without a paying customer. A little over 30 seconds after the rocket
lifted off, a nozzle on one of Vulcan's solid rocket boosters (SRBs) malfunctioned, causing the rocket to veer, before the main engines
corrected the course and the rocket successfully completed its flight.
Next, Vulcan will fly its first national security mission for the U.S.
Space Force, which is currently scheduled for early 2025.

The new Ariane 6 heavy-lift rocket for the European Space Agency (ESA)
also launched for the first time this year, on July 9 from Europe's
Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The Ariane 5 was retired about a
year before the first Ariane 6 launch, which left Europe unable to
launch big satellites on a rocket of its own for a spell.

a rectangular-bodied rover with three visible ribbed wheels, shines two
lights from the top of a short mast at the top front of its body. It's
visible side is a solar panel. The lights illuminate the grey surface immediately in front of the rover. A black sky hangs above.

Artist's illustration of the VIPER rover on the moon's surface. (Image
credit: NASA/Daniel Rutter)
9) NASA cancels VIPER moon rover mission
NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) was set
to raise the bar for lunar exploration by showcasing what AI could do in
space. The mission plan was for the robotic VIPER to land near the
moon's south pool to search for water and other resources to support the astronauts who will visit the moon's surface during NASA's Artemis missions.

However, the science world was shocked when NASA cancelled the VIPER
mission, a decision the agency announced on July 17. The decision to end
the VIPER project came down to budgetary concerns, even though it had
been successful up to the announcement. After spending around $450
million on the program, NASA chose to pull the plug. NASA expected to
save on development costs to the tune of $84 million by stopping the
lunar lander project.

After the decision, NASA has looked to see if other organizations are interested in using the rover as-is. Another option, NASA said, is to
reuse the lunar lander's scientific instruments and components for other
moon missions in the future. So, while VIPER's original mission is gone,
the lunar lander may live on in some other form.

Related Stories:
— Starship and Super Heavy: SpaceX's deep-space transportation for the
moon and Mars

— Europa Clipper: A complete guide to NASA's astrobiology mission

— Starliner: Boeing's next-generation spaceship for astronauts

closeup of a smiling man in a white spacesuit

Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko is seen outside the Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft
after he, NASA astronaut Anne McClain and Canadian Space Agency
astronaut David Saint-Jacques landed in Kazakhstan on June 24, 2019.
(Image credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
10) Oleg Kononenko breaks record for most time spent in space
Soviet and Russian cosmonauts have spent a long time in space. They hold
all of the top five slots in the most-total-time-in-space list. And this
year, 60-year-old Valery Polyakov broke the record with 1,1110 days in
space — by far the most total time spent off Earth by any human in
history. Polyakov also holds the record for most consecutive days in
space. In the mid-1990s, he spent 438 days on Russia's Mir space station.

The record for most people in Earth orbit at one time — 19 — was also
set this year, on Sept. 11, when three people launched on a Russian
Soyuz capsule to the ISS. This broke the previous record of 17 people in
orbit, which was notched in May 2023.

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let us know at: community@space.com.

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Julian Dossett
Julian Dossett
Julian Dossett is a freelance writer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He primarily covers the rocket industry and space exploration and, in
addition to science writing, contributes travel stories to New Mexico
Magazine. In 2022 and 2024, his travel writing earned IRMA Awards.
Previously, he worked as a staff writer at CNET. He graduated from Texas
State University in San Marcos in 2011 with a B.A. in philosophy. He
owns a large collection of sci-fi pulp magazines from the 1960s.

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