Big space events coming up in 2026 #shorts

These are the big events coming up in 2026 in astrophysics. April will hopefully see the launch of Artemis II, NASA’s mission crewed by astronauts that will loop around the Moon - all in prep for landing humans on the Moon again in a few years time with the Artemis IV mission. October 2026 will hopefully see the launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA’s next great observatory and the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. That’s why it’s named after Nancy Grace Roman aka “The Mother of Hubble” who was the chief of astronomy at NASA in he 60s and 70s and oversaw the foundational plans for the Hubble Space Telescope. I have a whole video on what the Roman telescope will be used for if you want to check that out. Then in November we’ll see the arrival of ESA’s BepiColombo spacecraft at the planet Mercury, only the 3rd ever spacecraft to visit Mercury. The mission aims to understand Mercury's evolution, its weird magnetic field, and whether there’s any potential water ice in cold shadowy polar craters. Also in November 2026 the spacecraft Voyager 1 will officially reach 1 light day away from Earth, that means it will take a signal from Voyager 1, 24 hours to make it back to us here on Earth. Launched back at the end of the 70s the Voyager 1 & 2 probes gave us our first detailed glimpses of the outer gas giant planets with each successive planet fly-by, and now Voyager 1 is the most distant human made object from Earth! #artemis #nasa #esa #roman #spacetelescope #voyager #bepicolombo Video filmed on a Sony ⍺7 IV --- 📚 My book, "A Brief History of Black Holes", out NOW in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook (which I narrated myself!): http://lnk.to/DrBecky --- 👕 My merch, including JWST designs, are available here (with worldwide shipping!): https://dr-becky.teemill.com/ --- 🎧 Royal Astronomical Society Podcast that I co-host: podfollow.com/supermassive --- 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe and click the little bell icon to be notified when I post a new video! --- 👩🏽‍💻 I'm Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford (Christ Church). I love making videos about science with an unnatural level of enthusiasm. I like to focus on how we know things, not just what we know. And especially, the things we still don't know. If you've ever wondered about something in space and couldn't find an answer online - you can ask me! My day job is to do research into how supermassive black holes can affect the galaxies that they live in. In particular, I look at whether the energy output from the disk of material orbiting around a growing supermassive black hole can stop a galaxy from forming stars. http://drbecky.uk.com