Predictions 2022

[scienceguy]

It's time for the predictions thread again!

Link to last year's thread:

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52085.0

Predictions for spaceflight 2022

Starship sent to Mars

SpaceX transports crew to the ISS at least 3 times

SLS continues to be delayed

NASA Perseverance rover finds evidence of organic molecules

Rocket lab reaches orbit at least once

Virgin Galactic continues to take tourists into space

An exomoon is discovered

Earth-sized planet less than 40 light years away found with nitrogen in its atmosphere

Another Earth-size planet found in the habitable zone of a star less than 20 light years away

Water vapor found in the atmosphere of Callisto

India continues its space program with no major setbacks

China continues work on space station with no major setbacks

[Scintillant]

JWST deploys successfully (fingers crossed!).

Astra reaches orbit at least once before the end of H1 2022.

Artemis 1 launches before the end of 2022.

OFT-2 flies, but CFT does not.

Vulcan flies.

At least 2 more internet satellite constellations are announced.

[jketch]

*SLS flies in the first half of the year, successfully
*Starship flies in the first half of the year. Ascent and deorbit burns are successful, but it does not survive reentry. SuperHeavy has a successful landing
*Starship flies a total of four times. The final one survives reentry and makes an intact water landing in the Pacific. SuperHeavy  lands back at the launch site.
*SpaceX requests permission to increase launch cadence from Boca Chica from 5 launches annually to 20 launches and and EIS is being prepared.
*OFT-2 launches in July, CFT scheduled for early 2023.
*BE-4 achieves its rated thrust and is flight qualified. Flight engines are delivered to ULA and integrated to Vulcan by the end of the year, but it has not launched yet.
*JWST is launched in early January
*Ariane 6 flies, has a minor anomaly but still reaches orbit.
*New Shepard and VSS Unity continue to fly passengers without significant incident.
*At least one additional Dragon passenger flight beyond the NASA and Axiom flights is announced and flown.
*Shenzhou program continues as scheduled without major incident
*Initial Gaganyaan test flight occurs in Q4 and is successful. Crewed flight officially delayed to 2024

[StarshipPassenger69]

- Early 2022 - starship 20 goes to orbit, reentry is sketchy, loosing 1/4 of the heat tiles, comes back with new rainbow colors induced by reentry plasma, it softly lands for recovery, both SS 20 and SH 4 goes through in-depth investigations after flight.

- Nasa launches their brand new SLS, it fails, 1 or 2 of the 4 center core engines doesn't burn for the full duration.

- Late 2022 - SpaceX lands a Starship drone on the moon, deploy a Cyber truck and remotely drive it around. The truck will be outfitted with solar cells on the roof with a 4k 360 view video camera streaming real time to earth, probably on Youtube for the entire planet to watch. hopefully the truck has a flag pole on the box with the American flag.

- China lands taikonauts on the moon and plants fleg. they also find alot of ice.

- Russia lands Cosmonauts on the moon. while on the moon, the Cosmonauts try to get into the Tesla lunar Cybertruck, sentry mode flashes at them recording everything. hehe Cosmonauts featured on WHAMBAM.

- Nasa's DART mission will be successful. 

[Vahe231991]

Here are my predictions for 2022:
- SLS has a flawless first flight this February
- SpaceX signs a contract with the Carlsbad-based firm Poseidon Resources Corporation to use a 500,000 cubic feet glass tank and fill it with 1 million tons of seawater off the coast of southern California so that the water is desalinated and used to make sufficient liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the Starship rocket
- A rocket jointly developed by Cuba and South Africa using components from the canceled RSA-3 rocket components and FROG-7 artillery rockets makes its first orbital launch, constituting the first orbital launch for the developing world
- North Korea launching its first geostationary satellite into orbit
- Russia launching a spacecraft designed to retrieve and de-orbit derelict Soviet-era communications and SIGINT satellites over Siberia and the vicinity of Yekaterinberg
- SpaceX Starship achieves its first successful orbital flight
- First Dream Chaser orbital flight goes as planned
- The NROL-91 and NROL-68 are launched a few months apart from each other due to a tight NRO budget for fiscal year 2022.

[AS_501]

-   SLS has perfect launch.
-   Artemis 1 mission goes as planned.
-   First SS/SH heavy launch ends in failure during launch.
-   Second SS/SH flight is successful in all respects.
-   SS loses more tiles than expected during reentry, but remains intact for return.
-   Starliner has successful unmanned test flight to ISS, followed by successful crew flight.
-   All F9/Dragon launches and ISS dockings are successful.
-   JWST is successfully launched and deployed, through several hair-raising deployment hiccups occur.
-   HST suffers irreversible failure, shut down.
-   Mars Insight lander suffers complete power failure due to Martian dust on solar arrays.
-   Curiosity rover goes into extended safe mode, but is restored.
-   Mars Global Surveyor or Mars Odyssey suffers irreversible failure, shut down.
-   One of the Soyuz/ISS missions lands off-target following ballistic reentry.
-   One of the ISS SARJs begins to vibrate, locked in position until repair EVA is conducted.

[Phil Stooke]

You can already tick the Mars Global Surveyor box.  Congratulations!

[AS_501]

Old Mars orbiters don't die, they just fade away...

Did not know that, thanks!

[Finn Mac Doreahn]

SpaceX

Starship reaches orbit with a couple of minor problems. It water lands near the Marshall Islands and stays afloat long enough for the USN to recover it. Initially they think it’s an alien mother ship,but the SpaceX logo disproves that quickly. Another Starship test goes off course in the upper atmosphere and the FTS does its thing. No crewed mission by end of year but first is in planning for Q2 2023 and a crew has been named. Moonship and dearMoon continue to plod along with slight schedule slippage. Late in the year hardware for both is unveiled.

The rest of SpaceX’s manifest goes surprisingly well. One partial failure strands a bunch of polar Starlinks which are replaced a few months later. Ax-1,Crew-4,Ax-2,and Crew-5 go off successfully,but a Crew-1-esque thruster anomaly briefly threatens Ax-2. Judicious fuel consumption planning saves the day.

Blue Origin,Rocketlab,ATK,etc

NS flies 6 crewed missions. They fly their first ex-astronaut,Kathy Thornton,in early summer. One crewed mission in Q4 lands off target but is recovered later that night.

NG plods along. Yawn.

Rocket Lab flies ~10 missions,no failures. LC-2 is first utilized sometime about Q2. Four rocket stages are recovered,one is reused. Neutron hardware is unveiled in Q3.

ATK unveils a solid microsat launcher based on the SRB.

Astra flies 7 successful missions and 2 failures.

NASA

JWST launches on time,reaches L2,deploys. Not much spectacular science as yet,but the first exomoon is discovered using JWST data.

Nothing much happens on ISS. Some repair work is required.

LOFTID lands in the Gulf of Mexico. It is recovered.

Perseverance perseveres. Ingenuity falls silent in August.

Moon mission planning proceeds.  A cool new rover is unveiled in the spring. Dynetics rebrands their lander as a lunar cargo delivery system.

The new astronaut class is selected,consisting of 18 people. Two of them are openly LGBT+,which is revealed during an interview. Their selection isn’t really affected.

Russia,China,Japan

Roskosmos plods along until April,when a tweetscandal forces Rogozin to resign. Sergei Krikalev succeeds him. No mission failures.

Shenzhou 16-18 are announced,with the Shenzhou being retired after mission 21 or so in favor of the new vehicle. 3 mission failures,2 partial and 1 total. Zhurong roves.

Not much really happens in Japan. H3 debuts successfully.

[Bubbinski]

Okay, here goes:

Starship first orbital launch happens in March. Goes successfully until the final descent/soft landing process which isn’t so soft due to some reentry damage. By end of year 4 orbital flights are made.

Artemis-1 launches in May. Successful flight of SLS/Orion, with some issues noted that will need to be fixed before crew can fly on Artemis-2.

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully goes through its deployment sequence and all the effort over the years pays off with a successful instrument calibration and initial science. Hints of a groundbreaking discovery begin to show up in unofficial chatter by the end of the year.

SpaceX launches 36 F9/FH missions, including 4 Falcon Heavy missions.

Psyche and JUICE missions launch successfully during their windows.

Vulcan and Ariane 6 first flights pushed into early 2023.

Late in 2022 Blue Origin finally delivers flight engines to ULA.

New Glenn unofficially pushed back to 2026.

New Shepard flies three times with crew and twice with cargo, but some issues with the system cause the cadence to not be any higher.

Virgin Galactic finally flies SS2 again late in the year. Tourist flights pushed to 2023.

A few space tourists switch from orbital to suborbital flights due to debris concerns from the Russian ASAT test.

The Russian ASAT test debris forces a great deal of replanning of ISS missions and activities as well as activities of other LEO spacecraft. ISS itself escapes unscathed but at least one other important spacecraft is damaged by this debris. By end of year an official push for an ASAT test ban treaty starts. However, the ISS future is clouded and unofficial plans to move up its replacement (in a different orbit, with more shielding) are quietly started.

Despite this, science on ISS will be part of a major promising discovery, which will be followed up aboard ISS and other space stations in the future.

Boeing Starliner OFT-2 pushed to early 2023 due to major valve redesign.

At least ten crewed space flights (suborbital and orbital) are made in 2022. However, at least one major mishap will occur that would lead to an Apollo 13 type situation or worse. This will impact multiple programs and future timelines, though it will not halt all activity as human spaceflight has more alternatives and more resilience than in 1986 or 2003.

China will launch its pair of modules but not everything goes swimmingly for the station program in the following months as flight problems plus threats on the ground (war, economic crisis due to Evergrande) take their toll.

One world hotspot erupts into all out war and causes serious problems with spaceflight and the world economy. The US is affected less than others, but there are still problems resulting even here.

By end of year COVID pandemic FINALLY starts to show signs of abating, though progress is uneven. NASA and other agencies are able to function normally, more or less.

India successfully lands Chandrayaan-3 on the Moon and its rover works. By end of year first Gaganyaan test flight launches.

ExoMars launches successfully and heads off to the Red Planet.

A major discovery is made by Perseverance that will rewrite textbooks. Curiosity also finds something remarkable that will be part of that discovery.

Astra will start operational flights by end of year after successful tests. So will Firefly.

Relativity first flight fails but will reach orbit by end of year.

Rocketlab flies six times, COVID restrictions have some effect on flight cadence. But by end of year Wallops launch site finally cleared to fly and first Electron stage successfully recovered by helicopter.

On a personal level, I’ll finally make a long awaited launch trip. And I’ll build at least one spaceflight related model.

[TrevorMonty]

Rocketlab flies six times, COVID restrictions have some effect on flight cadence. But by end of year Wallops launch site finally cleared to fly and first Electron stage successfully recovered by helicopter.

There won't be anymore lockdowns now that COVID is here to stay and most of population is vaccinated. There maybe restrictions but not likely to effect RL. Restriction on non residents entering country could effect some launches especially Capstone's engineers.






Sent from my SM-G570Y using Tapatalk

[Endeavour_01]

So before I made my predictions for the coming year I decided to revisit the predictions I made 5 years ago about 2022. Fair to say a good number of them have or are very likely to come true. The two big misses were on SLS (too optimistic) and Starship (too pessimistic).

So what will be happening in human spaceflight in 2022, five years from now?

Commercial Crew vehicles will be conducting regular crew rotation flights to the ISS.

SpaceX (and possibly Boeing) will fly one tourist flight to LEO (or perhaps around the moon) a year.

ISS extended to at least 2026. Likely 2028.

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic will be flying regular sub-orbital tourism flights.

SLS/Orion will be gearing up for the EM-2 flight. DSG and a reusable manned crewed lunar lander are under development.

SpaceX will have made good progress on BFR but are years away from a first flight.

So with that background here are my predictions for the coming year.

1. Artemis I lifts off in April 2022. Mission is a success.

2. Starliner flies OFT-2 successfully in H2 of 2022 but does not fly CFT in 2022.

3. First orbital flight of Starship/Super Heavy occurs H1 of 2022. Starship successfully reaches orbit.

4. Crew for Artemis II is announced after the completion of Artemis I. One of the crewmembers will be CSA Astronaut Jeremy Hansen.

5. SpaceX continues regular crew rotation flights to ISS and adds more commercial astronaut missions to the manifest.

6. Blue Origin continues to lobby Congress to force NASA to add a second HLS contract ASAP.

7. New Glenn and Ariane 6 do not debut in 2022. Vulcan debuts in 2022 but just barely.

8. The NASASpaceflight.com store will add shirts for "Resilience", "Endurance", and the to be named Crew-4 Dragon so I can have a complete set of shirts for each Crew Dragon in the fleet. (please  )

[Scintillant]

Astra reaches orbit at least once before the end of H1 2022.

Prediction fulfilled!

[high road]

None of the upcoming big rockets launch a payload in 2022 (SLS, Ariane 6, Vulcan, New Glenn, Starship). I'm specifically saying 'payload', as I do expect Starship launches, but all for testing technology.

Oldspace (Arianespace, ULA, ye olde smallsat launchers, non-Soyuz Russian launchers) continues to launch at the current all time low they have been in since before Covid. The rising tide of the space industry is not lifting their boats. I'm excluding Arianespace selling Soyuz launches to constellations that rather not pay a competitor for launches.

SLS continues to run into unforeseen issues, next to issues foreseen by the IGO.

[Tywin]

Vulcan debut in middle 2022...


CLPS is a success with her landers...


New Glenn real rocket is seeing, and ready but debut in early 2023...


SLS launch in summer 2022...


Starship doesn't reach orbit in 2022...


Rivian and Tesla fight for the Moon rover for NASA...


Nasa approves a second lander for the HLS program...


Ariane 6 debut late 2022...


Astra success 12 launches in 2022...


Rocket Lab, launch with success Capstone...


ESA approve a mission to return material from ice moons...


Russia launches the Angara a few times...


ISRO approve her LEO, space station for the late decade...


Chandrayaan 3 success...


Dream Chaser doesn't launch in 2022...


The Artemis program gets more funded...


Firefly success and launch 3 times to orbit...


Relativity success and go to orbit in the first semester...


Rocket Lab, have a failure...

[Eric Hedman]

Artemis I
   Launches Q1 –
      Discover a few fixable issues for Artemis II
      Crew of Artemis II announced shortly after mission

Starship / Heavy
   Orbital Test Flight Jan 2022 Before SLS
      Booster crashes on Mechazilla landing / catch attempt
         Damage to tower and Mechazilla delays next test to Q3

      Starship successful ocean landing / sink off the coast of Hawaii
         Has some heat shield issues that need fixing before flight two

   Second test flight Q3
      Mechazilla successfully catches booster
      Starship second successful ocean landing / sinking

   Third Test flight Q4
      Heavy Booster caught by Mechazilla
      Starship lands on pad in Boca Chica

   First in orbit refueling test pushed off to NET 2023

Falcon-9
   All missions complete success

James Webb
   Deploys correctly.  Fully operational by end of year.

Hubble Space Telescope
   Fails for good by year end.

United Launch Alliance
   Gets BE-4 flight engines by end of March

Vulcan launch success in Q4
   All other launches successful

Blue Origin
   New Shepherd
      8 to 12 commercial flights

   New Glenn
      First stage with flight engines rolled to pad in Q4
         Fit checks, test electrical connections, etc.

      Second Stage
         Expendable
            Not seen in 2022

         Reusable Roadmap revealed
            Cargo version
            Tanker Version
            Crewed Version
               Crew size of ten to twelve
                  To support larger crews on Orbital Reef
               Winged landing – Shuttle landing strip
                  Small light wings compared to STS

   Orbital Reef
      Significant redesign from first graphics

   Blue Moon
      Congress does not add funds to fully support second lander
         Blue continues at slower pace with National Team

Virgin Galactic
   No longer Care

Boeing
   CST-100 OFT-2 flight in early Q3 successful
   Crewed mission pushed to 2023

Gateway
   Stays on schedule for 2024 launch 2025 arrival

Will still miss the way Jim Bridenstine was the face of NASA

[Zed_Noir]

<snip>
Starship / Heavy
   Orbital Test Flight Jan 2022 Before SLS
      Booster crashes on Mechazilla landing / catch attempt
         Damage to tower and Mechazilla delays next test to Q3
<snip>

IIRC the first Super Heavy is suppose to be landing on the ocean like the early Falcon 9 landing attempts. 

[Eric Hedman]

<snip>
Starship / Heavy
   Orbital Test Flight Jan 2022 Before SLS
      Booster crashes on Mechazilla landing / catch attempt
         Damage to tower and Mechazilla delays next test to Q3
<snip>

IIRC the first Super Heavy is suppose to be landing on the ocean like the early Falcon 9 landing attempts. 

Last year I had a prediction proven right before the start of the year.  This year I get one wrong immediately.

fixed.

[FishInferno]

Obligatory don't take this seriously you know the drill.


2022:

SLS does not fly in 2022.

Starship makes an orbital launch in H1 2022, making it through MECO but something goes wrong after that.

Starship successfully makes it to orbit by the end of the year. No orbital refueling tests.

Elon Musk announces a stripped-down, expendable upper stage for Starship that will be used to launch Starlink satellites. This comes amidst challenges getting Starships to survive reentry.

The first flight BE-4s are delivered to ULA and Vulcan is fully integrated but does not fly in 2022.

Relativity Space makes a launch attempt but it is not successful.

Prototype components for Terran R are showcased in a press release.

Rocket Lab successfully reuses an Electron by year's end. The first helicopter catch attempt, however, will fail due to problems with the helicopter (nobody is hurt).

Archimedes engine does not fire in 2022.

Firefly makes it to orbit.

At least one smallsat launch company with significant hardware completed will shut down due to a lack of revenue.

Blue Origin announces either:
a) a redesigned, reusable Blue Moon with intentions to self-fund initial flights
b) a completely unrelated project (crewed capsule, space tug, etc.)

Virgin Galactic does not fly commercial customers in 2022.



Long-term (~10yrs):

A Starship (uncrewed) successfully lands on Mars before the end of the decade.

SpaceX announces their crewed Mars mission without NASA's involvement, but publicly states that NASA is welcome to send a couple of their astronauts at no cost to the taxpayer. Political shenanigans ensue, but NASA eventually accepts this invitation.

The Department of Defense pays SpaceX an obscene amount of money to build two Starship launch sites in the western US (probably Nevada) for their exclusive use.

Starship has terrestrial launch sites at Starbase, Cape Canaveral, and Nova Scotia. Floating launch platforms are based in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico.

SpaceX's headquarters is now in Austin, TX. Their Hawthorne facility is now primarily used to train crew/passengers.

SLS flies three times before its cancellation.

Gateway is partially completed before being abandoned in favor of a direct Orion-Starship (later completely Starship) architecture.

Virgin Galactic never flies tourists.

Relativity Space successfully makes it to orbit, but is later acquired by another aerospace company for their 3D printing technology, which will be used in niche applications but not for the entire vehicle.

Neutron successfully flies and achieves reusability, but never attracts the business Rocket Lab hopes. However, Neutron's technical success will prompt investors to fund Rocket Lab's development of a true Starship competitor, Proton.

New Glenn does not fly before 2026. By this time, Project Jarvis has completely replaced the expendable upper stage.

The Axiom Station is built (albeit a couple years late), but the end result is significantly larger as later modules are sized for launch on Starship.

Before 2030, China launches a crewed Lunar orbit mission.

Japan begins earnest work on a Starship competitor, but it does not fly before 2030.

Roscosmos and China start cooperating more, with cosmonauts visiting the Tiangong station. By the end of the decade NASA and Roscosmos barely have a relationship.

India successfully launches crew. NASA and ESA eagerly incorporate them into future missions.

[Jrcraft]

USA:
 SpaceX's F9 and FH all succeed in their missions, but a booster or two don't land
SS F1 fails either during first stage flight, coast phase, or entry.

Rocketlab: Electron suffers an anomaly. they recover a few boosters, but don't fly a used one until next year.

VG, flies people near end of year

BO, We see the first NG take shape, NS flies 7 crewed flights, and 2-3 research flights.

Firefly reaches orbit on next flight, Stage two isn't entirely nominal though.

Relativity's first launch ends with first stage failure around max-q.

Astra launches 8 times, fails at least once.

VO flies all missions as intended

SLS/Artemis I works flawlessly in an April launch, very minor Orion issues, nothing critical.

Axiom station delayed

We get a surprise Pegasus launch

JWST deploys fine, but some deployment get delayed.

Russia
All flights are nominal, Angara caries first live payload.

A Soyuz or progress has to be manually docked.

China

A long march 3b failure

Another small solid rocket fails in flight.

New CSS modules fly, but a bit later than planned.

India

Flies less missions than are scheduled, as per usual.

We see SSLV launch.

ESA

Vega C launches.

All launches are a success.

Japan

H3 launches successfully

OMOTENASHI fails to land

Iran
two surprise launches, one fails.

Israel

No launches of the year besides suborbital missiles.

North Korea
No launches of the year

South Korea
KSLV-II succeeds.