{"id":18678,"date":"2017-12-30T20:48:32","date_gmt":"2017-12-30T12:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/year-in-space-look-back-at-2017s-black-sun-look-forward-to-2018s-bright-moon\/"},"modified":"2017-12-30T20:48:32","modified_gmt":"2017-12-30T12:48:32","slug":"year-in-space-look-back-at-2017s-black-sun-look-forward-to-2018s-bright-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/year-in-space-look-back-at-2017s-black-sun-look-forward-to-2018s-bright-moon\/","title":{"rendered":"Year in space: Look back at 2017\u2019s black sun \u2026 look forward to 2018\u2019s bright moon"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_356898\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-356898\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-356898\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/L1020286-630x473.jpg\" alt=\"Eclipse Seattle\" width=\"630\" height=\"473\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-356898\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eclipse watchers turned Aug. 21\u2019s event into a party at Kerry Park in Seattle\u2019s Queen Anne neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kurt Schlosser)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The first total solar eclipse to go across America from coast to coast in 99 years has to rank as the top space story of 2017. But where do you go from there?<\/p>\n<p>Would you believe the moon?<\/p>\n<p>The moon was a supporting player in this year\u2019s brush with totality. After all, you can\u2019t have a solar eclipse unless the new moon gets in the way. And it certainly held center stage for a phenomenon witnessed by an estimated 215 million. That\u2019s a bigger audience than the Super Bowl gets on TV.<\/p>\n<p>But in 2018, the moon really gets its day in the sun, figuratively speaking. It starts next month with a New Year\u2019s Day supermoon, followed by a total lunar eclipse on Jan. 31.<\/p>\n<p>We lay out other reasons to moon over the moon in our annual roundup of the five top space stories from the year that\u2019s ending, plus five trends to watch in the year ahead:<\/p>\n<h4>Five space stories from 2017<\/h4>\n<p><strong>All-American eclipse:<\/strong> We covered the Aug. 21 solar eclipse from Oregon and Idaho, but the event\u2019s effect was felt far beyond the narrow track of totality: On the bright side, Seattleites could enjoy a 92 percent eclipse. On the not-so-bright side, there was the controversy over subpar solar specs, a bad example at the White House, and scattered reports of eye injuries. It\u2019s a good reminder to get your certified eclipse-viewing glasses well in advance of the next American solar eclipse in 2024.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"The 'total' total solar eclipse in Madras\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/g0dz8TpV9RY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Rise of rocket reusability:<\/strong> SpaceX had an incredibly successful year, starting with its return to flight in January and hitting its peak this month&nbsp;with the launch of a refurbished Falcon 9 booster plus a refurbished Dragon cargo capsule. \u201cFlight-proven\u201d hardware used to be the exception in the launch industry, but SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk wants to make it the rule. So does Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos: This month, his Blue Origin space venture successfully launched and landed its fully reusable New Shepard suborbital spaceship.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Saturnian sayonara to Cassini mission:<\/strong> Twenty years after its launch, NASA\u2019s Cassini orbiter finally plunged to its fiery end in Saturn\u2019s clouds. The magnificent mission documented how shepherd moons keep Saturn\u2019s rings in line, revealed the hydrocarbon seas beneath Titan\u2019s smoggy atmosphere, and charted the icy geysers of Enceladus. So what\u2019s next? NASA is thinking about sending a drone to Titan, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is willing to chip in for a follow-up mission to Enceladus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Superwoman in space:<\/strong> Last year, Scott Kelly was NASA\u2019s space star by virtue of his nearly yearlong stint on the International Space Station. This year, Peggy Whitson won the spotlight for records including oldest woman in space (age 57), NASA astronaut with the most cumulative time in space (665 days) and most experienced female spacewalker (53 hours, 22 minutes).<\/p>\n<p><strong>To the moon!<\/strong> The Trump administration officially turned space policy away from sending astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid and toward putting astronauts on the moon, as a prelude to Mars missions. Jeff Bezos\u2019 Blue Origin venture proposed a lunar delivery system called \u201cBlue Moon,\u201d while SpaceX\u2019s Elon Musk adapted his company\u2019s exploration vision to provide for trips to the moon as well as to Mars.<\/p>\n<h4>Five space trends for 2018<\/h4>\n<p><strong>Best shots for moonshots:<\/strong> Several teams have until March 31&nbsp;to send commercial landers to the lunar surface and win $20 million in the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Among the favorites: Moon Express, which has Seattle-area entrepreneur Naveen Jain as its co-founder and executive chairman. It remains to be seen how NASA will follow through on the Trump White House\u2019s lunar ambitions, but China is already planning to send a lander and rover to the far side of the moon by the end of 2018.<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Moon Express Robotic Explorers\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HRSTSfeWzgQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Commercial rides to space:<\/strong> If everyone\u2019s schedule holds true, there\u2019ll be four U.S.-built rocket ships capable of carrying people into outer space by the end of 2018: SpaceX\u2019s crew-capable Dragon capsule, Boeing\u2019s Starliner CST-100 space taxi, Virgin Galactic\u2019s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane and Blue Origin\u2019s New Shepard craft. SpaceX and Boeing are heading to orbit and the space station for NASA, while Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are targeting suborbital space tourists and researchers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The SpaceX frontier:<\/strong> Crew Dragon isn\u2019t SpaceX\u2019s only big project for 2018. The company is gearing up for the maiden launch of its big Falcon Heavy rocket, with Elon Musk\u2019s Tesla Roadster packed on board for a trip that could take it as far as Martian orbit. SpaceX is also due to start putting its Starlink telecommunications satellites in orbit, and flesh out its plans for building the monster BFR rocket.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rendezvous with an asteroid:<\/strong> NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx robotic probe is scheduled to approach a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu in August for a survey, in preparation for collecting a sample and delivering it back to Earth in 2023.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"NASA's 2018 To Do List\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CxguTV-xwiI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\" data-ratio=\"0.5625\" data-width=\"800\" data-height=\"450\" style=\"display: block; margin: 0px; width: 800px; height: 450px;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Mars InSight takes off:<\/strong> After a two-year delay that was due to an instrument glitch, NASA\u2019s next Red Planet mission&nbsp;is scheduled for launch in May. The InSight lander will touch down in Elysium Planitia in November and study the interior and subsurface of Mars, using a sensitive seismometer and an underground heat probe.<\/p>\n<p>If everything works out the way it\u2019s planned, there\u2019ll be plenty to talk about by this time next year, when we\u2019ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 8 moon-circling mission and looking forward to the Apollo 11 festivities (which will include a big exhibit at Seattle\u2019s Pacific Science Center).<\/p>\n<p>Check back next year to see how many of these trends pay off, just as you can trace the record for the past 16 \u201cYear in Space\u201d assessments:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>2016 in review: Gravitational waves found<\/li>\n<li>2015 in review: Pluto revealed<\/li>\n<li>2014 in review: Landing on a comet<\/li>\n<li>2013 in review: Meteor blast sets off alarms<\/li>\n<li>2012 in review: Curiosity rover lands on Mars<\/li>\n<li>2011 in review: Farewell to the space shuttle<\/li>\n<li>2010 in review: NASA changes course<\/li>\n<li>2009 in review: Moon probe detects water<\/li>\n<li>2008 in review: Planets spotted around alien stars<\/li>\n<li>2007 in review: China makes big moves in space<\/li>\n<li>2006 in review: Shuttle fleet gets back on track<\/li>\n<li>2005 in review: A brief return to flight for NASA<\/li>\n<li>2004 in review: Commercial Space Age dawns<\/li>\n<li>2003 in review: Shuttle Columbia is lost<\/li>\n<li>2002 in review: Rocket successes and failures<\/li>\n<li>2001 in review: Reflections on a pale blue dot<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eclipse watchers turned Aug. 21\u2019s event into a party at Kerry Park in Seattle\u2019s Queen Anne neighborhood. (GeekWire Photo \/ Kurt Schlosser) The first total solar eclipse to go across America from coast to coast in 99 years has to rank as the top space story of 2017. But where do you go from there? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[625,1418,5287],"class_list":["post-18678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-moon","tag-solar-eclipse","tag-year-in-review-2017"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}