Have A Say In Future Space Priorities For All Humanity – Part 1: Present Day To 2046

The image of the Aurora Borealis and Earth was recently taken by Sergey Kud-Sverchkov from the International Space Station (ISS). We won’t get to see pictures from the ISS after 2030, when humanity’s biggest orbital space platform crashes into the Pacific Ocean, ending its 30+ years of service.

Since the first satellite began circling the Earth in 1957, we have sent robotic spacecraft and a variety of living things to low-Earth orbit. Humans have visited the surface of the Moon. Next month, a crew of four will revisit the lunar environs, a prequel to future Moon landings.

Scientific missions have visited the planets, asteroids, and even comets here in our Solar System. Some missions have left the Solar System behind, heading out into the Milky Way Galaxy.

Most of our space experience has come from government space agency programs. What were a select few nations just a few years ago have now been joined by a growing number of countries and private companies pursuing projects in low-Earth orbit and beyond.

Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are two billionaires with visions of humanity’s space future. Should the rest of us go along? Should government agencies defer to private enterprise in advancing humanity’s future in space? Here’s your chance to have a say.

Mapping out humanity’s future space priorities and predicting where we will be in a decade, two decades, fifty years from now, and by 2101, is an interesting exercise in futurism. What follows are 7 achievements and milestones for the period from now to 2036, and 7 more for the period ending a decade later. Do you agree with my prognostication, or do you have your own take on our space future? Please let me know.

Humanity in Space in the Next Decade (2036)

1. Human spaceflight will need to make low-Earth orbit (LEO) sustainable and profitable. We will need to solve the challenge of growing traffic in LEO, with some predicting a future crisis, labelled the Kessler Syndrome. Without a solution, we could limit the use of near-Earth space for hundreds of years.
2. Space infrastructure needs to sustain our use of LEO and geostationary orbital slots, expected to grow substantially with satellites of increasing sophistication launched for Earth observations and connecting all of us. LEO and geostationary space infrastructure need space-based services delivered by robotic spacecraft capable of refuelling, repurposing, repairing and de-orbiting satellites.
3. The value-add of the ISS needs one or more replacements with new LEO space stations. China’s Tiangong cannot be the sole answer. VAST Haven-1 represents the first in the line of future commercial space stations with a launch date no later than early 2027. Beyond LEO, the Artemis Program has plans for a cislunar station, the Lunar Gateway. A more substantial space station in cislunar space should be in place by 2036.
4. Artemis will return humans to the lunar surface. China will likely duplicate this feat by 2036. Both plan to create a part-time sustainable human presence on the lunar surface and build the necessary support infrastructure. Sustainable transportation technology needs to be developed to support a lunar human presence and shuttling supplies and crews from the Earth to the Moon and back.
5. Non-human missions to study Mars, including more autonomous landers and rovers, increase our understanding of our neighbour and allow searches to seek past and current extraterrestrial life on or beneath the planet’s surface. A human presence on Mars by 2036 needs new spaceship designs, far more robust than SpaceX’s Starship. These spaceships have to protect crews from space hazards and provide propulsion systems that dramatically reduce transit times. I don’t see human landings on Mars by 2036 without such dramatic transportation technology improvements.
6. We currently send robotic spacecraft to the planets and moons of the outer Solar System. By 2036, missions currently underway and new ones will vastly increase our understanding of our immediate space neighbourhood.
7. The development of nuclear-powered and other forms of space propulsion will augment our existing use of chemical rockets, making it feasible to go further and faster into space with larger payloads.

Space Outreach By 2046

1. Space-based manufacturing, power generation, and data centres will be realized in LEO within this time frame. It is already happening. The ISS has served well as a test bed for commercial companies to develop these technologies.
2. Habitats on the Moon and growing lunar infrastructure will be able to accommodate a rotating presence of up to 20 people. Today, NASA, several American companies including SpaceX and Blue Origin, the Italian Space Agency, France’s Thales, South Korea, China and Russia’s Roscosmos are designing and building pressurized habitats and supporting ground and transportation infrastructure. By 2046, with so many playing in this sandbox, there should be lots of options.
3. Space gas stations will service robotic and crewed spacecraft from LEO to cislunar space. We are already seeing several companies, NASA and the U.S. Space Force working on this much-needed space infrastructure. Among the companies involved is the UK-funded Orbit Fab with plans to launch propellant depots to service satellites in LEO and geostationary orbit. In America, NASA and the U.S. Space Force have plans to launch demo refuelling and repair satellites over the next three years. This is technology that will enable long-term space operations sustainability.
4. Several commercial and national space station projects will circle Earth. Right now, VAST Haven-1 will likely be deployed by 2027. VAST has plans to build modules that can be daisy-chained to create an affordable successor to the ISS. Other players with space station designs include Axiom Space, Starlab and Orbital Reef.
5. Commercial space mining operations are already in development. The lunar surface is seen as the initial space resource to exploit. Harvesting helium-3, water, in-situ metals, and propellant constituents from the Moon will fuel space infrastructure and support the construction of lunar habitats and cislunar and deep space stations. We already have the makings of a future space gold rush, with six commercial startups in the running to capture and mine asteroids
6. Robots on Mars will build habitats suitable for humans on the planet, followed by short-term human missions. Autonomous robots are central to a successful colonization of both the Moon and Mars. The technologies involved include swarm robotics, 3D printers, in-situ resource mining, and manufacturing. NASA has been developing autonomous construction technology to create 3D-printed pressurized habitats for use in both environments. By 2046, this technology should be perfected to deliver on this promise.
7. Space science will continue to find and study exoplanets with (this is my prediction) the first discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, not just extraterrestrial life. Today, we have ground-based radiotelescopes, the James Webb and soon the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope, plus work by SETI searching the galaxy. Assisted by artificial intelligence and using large-scale surveys covering far more radio wavelengths than we do today, we can increase the odds of making such a discovery. To date, we have discovered more than 5,000 exoplanets. We know there are billions more to find. That’s why I believe by 2046, we will have the technology to find narrowband radio technosignatures to indicate the presence of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. What we do once we have discovered these signals, we can consider an interstellar mission similar to what Stephen Hawking first proposed in 2016. Called Breakthrough Starshot, with $100 million in funding from a Russian billionaire, the project would build and send 1,000 nano-sized laser-propelled spacecraft towards Alpha and Proxima Centauri, our closest instellar neighbours, on a journey at 20% the speed of light (approximately 60,000 kilometres or 37,000 miles per second). It would take 20 years to get there and another 20 for us to receive the data and images sent back.

In Part 2, we will prognosticate about the milestones achievable by 2076 and 2101. In the meantime, let’s hear from readers what they think is likely to happen here in the 21st century.