Lots of interesting new missions, every few months.
The headliner is SpaceX attempting its first launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket later in January. Falcon Heavy is billed as "the world's most powerful rocket" and the payload in the first launch is Elon Musk's personal Tesla roadster, which he hopes to place into a Mars transfer orbit. (He wants to crash his car into Mars!) There's widespread suspicion (even inside SpaceX) that the first attempt to launch the Heavy might fail spectacularly. (This launch will probably be live-streamed, keep checking the Spacex website.)
SpaceX also plans to fly an unmanned test flight of its crew Dragon capsule in April, with a manned flight in August. (This schedule is expected by many to slip.) It will use the proven Falcon 9 rocket.
They were talking about a manned mission around the Moon by the end of the year, using Falcon Heavy and the crew Dragon, but they haven't said anything more about that and most observers doubt that it will actually happen. (Certainly not in this 2018 time-frame.)
Boeing plans to make an unmanned test flight of its new Starliner crew capsule in August with a first manned flight in November.
Blue Origin will probably attempt a manned test flight of its New Shepherd space tourism suborbital capsule this year.
Virgin Galactic will likely start manned powered testing of its own suborbital space tourism rocket plane. They were doing glide tests earlier this year. This group is taking it slow after the crash of a prototype vehicle and the death of a test pilot a while back during a powered test.
NASA is planning to launch its new Insight Mars lander in May. It should arrive on Mars this November. (Mars is in a favorable position for quick transfer orbits.) This one is intended to investigate Mars' subsurface 'geology', determining the size, thickness and density of Mars' core, mantle and crust. Mars is interesting to planetary scientists in its own right and to Earth geologists since it's Earthlike enough to have probably had a very similar early history, but is small enough to have cooled and more or less frozen at an earlier stage. So investigating Mars today might give us insights into the earlier stages of the Earth. Insight was scheduled for launch several years ago but problems developed in its instruments, and now it's ready to go.
NASA plans to launch its new TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) exoplanet hunter satellite (using a SpaceX Falcon 9) in March (with backup dates out to June). This one works like the existing Kepler satellite by observing transits, but promises to survey some 200,000 stars in our galactic neighborhood with an accuracy able to detect transits of anything from Earth-size planets to super-giants orbiting a variety of stellar types. I get the impression that it's less about getting lots of data on each one than about getting a more complete catalog of what's out there and locating likely candidates for further investigation.
NASA plans to launch the Parker Solar Probe during the summer, intended to orbit the Sun at very close range, well inside Mercury's orbit (in 'hot Jupiter' territory).
NASA's Osiris Rex asteroid sampling mission should arrive at its target asteroid in August. The plan is for it to carefully maneuver in and slowly survey the asteroid this year (probably lots of cool photographs) and the actual sampling won't come until next year.
NASA's New Horizons vehicle that imaged Pluto should arrive at the small Kuiper belt object that it's now headed towards. This one seems to have an interesting shape, perhaps two smaller objects stuck together.
The European Space Agency and Japan's Bepicolumbo mission to Mercury is scheduled to launch in October. It will eventually put two orbiters in orbit around that planet.
Rocketlab, the New Zealand/US group that tried and failed to orbit a satellite last year from their NZ launch site is ready to have another go "early" this year (no date announced yet) after making some improvements to their vehicle. (They plan to live stream this launch.)
The latest X-prize competition to land a rover on the Moon reaches its target date this year. There are several credible teams working on it, but none look anywhere close to being ready to launch.
The headliner is SpaceX attempting its first launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket later in January. Falcon Heavy is billed as "the world's most powerful rocket" and the payload in the first launch is Elon Musk's personal Tesla roadster, which he hopes to place into a Mars transfer orbit. (He wants to crash his car into Mars!) There's widespread suspicion (even inside SpaceX) that the first attempt to launch the Heavy might fail spectacularly. (This launch will probably be live-streamed, keep checking the Spacex website.)
SpaceX also plans to fly an unmanned test flight of its crew Dragon capsule in April, with a manned flight in August. (This schedule is expected by many to slip.) It will use the proven Falcon 9 rocket.
They were talking about a manned mission around the Moon by the end of the year, using Falcon Heavy and the crew Dragon, but they haven't said anything more about that and most observers doubt that it will actually happen. (Certainly not in this 2018 time-frame.)
Boeing plans to make an unmanned test flight of its new Starliner crew capsule in August with a first manned flight in November.
Blue Origin will probably attempt a manned test flight of its New Shepherd space tourism suborbital capsule this year.
Virgin Galactic will likely start manned powered testing of its own suborbital space tourism rocket plane. They were doing glide tests earlier this year. This group is taking it slow after the crash of a prototype vehicle and the death of a test pilot a while back during a powered test.
NASA is planning to launch its new Insight Mars lander in May. It should arrive on Mars this November. (Mars is in a favorable position for quick transfer orbits.) This one is intended to investigate Mars' subsurface 'geology', determining the size, thickness and density of Mars' core, mantle and crust. Mars is interesting to planetary scientists in its own right and to Earth geologists since it's Earthlike enough to have probably had a very similar early history, but is small enough to have cooled and more or less frozen at an earlier stage. So investigating Mars today might give us insights into the earlier stages of the Earth. Insight was scheduled for launch several years ago but problems developed in its instruments, and now it's ready to go.
NASA plans to launch its new TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) exoplanet hunter satellite (using a SpaceX Falcon 9) in March (with backup dates out to June). This one works like the existing Kepler satellite by observing transits, but promises to survey some 200,000 stars in our galactic neighborhood with an accuracy able to detect transits of anything from Earth-size planets to super-giants orbiting a variety of stellar types. I get the impression that it's less about getting lots of data on each one than about getting a more complete catalog of what's out there and locating likely candidates for further investigation.
NASA plans to launch the Parker Solar Probe during the summer, intended to orbit the Sun at very close range, well inside Mercury's orbit (in 'hot Jupiter' territory).
NASA's Osiris Rex asteroid sampling mission should arrive at its target asteroid in August. The plan is for it to carefully maneuver in and slowly survey the asteroid this year (probably lots of cool photographs) and the actual sampling won't come until next year.
NASA's New Horizons vehicle that imaged Pluto should arrive at the small Kuiper belt object that it's now headed towards. This one seems to have an interesting shape, perhaps two smaller objects stuck together.
The European Space Agency and Japan's Bepicolumbo mission to Mercury is scheduled to launch in October. It will eventually put two orbiters in orbit around that planet.
Rocketlab, the New Zealand/US group that tried and failed to orbit a satellite last year from their NZ launch site is ready to have another go "early" this year (no date announced yet) after making some improvements to their vehicle. (They plan to live stream this launch.)
The latest X-prize competition to land a rover on the Moon reaches its target date this year. There are several credible teams working on it, but none look anywhere close to being ready to launch.