Why is the year 2023 considered the most "exciting" in terms of space missions and what can we expect this year?

"Failure is not an option," was once the most famous phrase ever uttered in any space mission control room.

The most powerful rocket ever built, Starship, is being developed by Elon Musk's company SpaceX.

The 121-meter-long, 9-meter-wide rocket with 39 engines is designed to carry about 150 tons or up to 100 people.

SpaceX plans to use Starship to launch multiple satellites at once.

NASA has commissioned a version of this "spaceship" to land astronauts on the Moon, and hopes that one day it can transport the first settlers to Mars.

Starship's first launch from Texas in April lasted four minutes before the rocket exploded, spewing debris over the Gulf of Mexico.

After thousands of modifications, the second flight took place in November and lasted eight minutes, he writes with the BBC, the Telegraph reports.

And SpaceX has plenty of reason to be optimistic about its flights.

Falcon-1's first flight ended in failure, and many people were skeptical of its plans for reuse.

Now, 20 years later, some of its rockets have flown 18 times, and SpaceX regularly sends astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) on the Dragon spacecraft.

Despite SpaceX's success and ambitions, Ken Kremer, managing editor of the website Space UpClose, is skeptical about NASA's plans to use Starship.

"It's going to take a lot of work, it's incredibly complicated," Kremer said.

The most ambitious mission in decades to the Moon's surface was led by India.

On August 23, Chandrayann-3 made history when it became the first mission to touch the south pole of the Moon.

"It was of global importance," said Mila Mitra, former NASA scientist and co-founder of the Delhi-based education company Stem and Space.

The rocket used during the mission, bearing the Indian space agency's insignia, managed to find sulfur on the Moon, record a possible earthquake, and detect a temperature change on the lunar surface.

The South Pole of the Moon is one of the main destinations of NASA missions.

This is due to the fact that it has been confirmed to contain available ice, which would allow future missions to use water for survival.

The Russian state is out of this space race.

Russia's attempt to beat India to the south pole of the Moon resulted in the crash of its spacecraft, Luna 25.

Meanwhile, China is quietly developing its next-generation rockets and spacecraft.

"If lawmakers continue to cut NASA's budget, it will delay the Artemis project, Starship, and the Blue Origin landing," warns Kremer.

"The Chinese could beat us at the south pole of the moon, and that would be really terrible."

The race to plant the next flag on the moon just keeps on increasing.

Of great interest is also the discovery of data about the origin of life, for which it is said that NASA's Osiris-Rex mission can give us answers.

Meanwhile, samples taken from asteroid Bennu could provide insights into the formation of the Solar System, and perhaps how we got here.

Recently, NASA has announced that it will redirect the Osiris-Rex spacecraft on a new mission to study the Apophis asteroid in 2029.

In addition to the study of the Moon, attempts are being made to obtain data about the universe from the space telescope, Euclid, of the European Space Agency.

Its first images were released in November, and cover a large area of ​​the sky in incredible detail.

Only 5 percent of the universe consists of atoms. The rest are known as "dark matter" and "dark energy".

"It's one of the biggest problems in physics," said Isobel Hook, a professor of astrophysics at England's Lancaster University.

Using the Atacama Cosmological Telescope, scientists managed to produce a new map of the distribution of dark matter.

Over the next six years, Euclid will survey billions of galaxies to build a new map of the universe.

Euclid could detect its influence by observing how gravity bends and distorts light, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing.

As science and technological devices advance, so does the opportunity for us to learn more about the universe and the planets.

The Curiosity and Perseverance rockets are still on Mars, Juno explores the swirling clouds of Jupiter, and Voyager 1 and 2 have limped off into the void of space never to return.

As for 2024, we can look forward to further lunar missions, including the launch of the Europa Clipper, and the first flight of the European Ariane 6 rocket.

Also, the Artemis II mission is expected to be the most exciting in human space, which is expected to send four astronauts on a 21-day flight around the Moon. /Telegraph/