5 Future Space Trends You May Not Know About

Space. The final frontier. The darkness beyond our planet has drawn philosophers, poets and scientists for centuries, while still remaining almost as unexplored as in the millenia before. Our progress in this field will unevitably grow, making science fiction a reality, but what trends will continue in the forthcoming decades?

Read on to find out about the most probable 5 future trends in space exploration.

1. Asteroid Mining and Exploration

While this may sound almost like sci-fi to you, asteroid mining is actually going to become a very real business, with several companies (like Planetary Resources) already making their plans to begin harvesting around 2020. Asteroid mining could be an answer to our world's depleting resources, with the possibility of extracting elements like iron, antimony, gold, silver, lead, indium and other minerals crucial to modern society.

With the fact, that a lot of these resources will be depleted on Earth by the end of this century, this may actually be one of the ways humanity will continue to prosper with its current level of consumption.

2. Moon Exploration and Base Building

This is one of the trends that was actually expected to happen much sooner, with the first man on the moon in 1969; but so far, the lunar missions were only consisting of astronauts walking on its surface, with the last man on the moon in 1972. Other missions until now were consisting only from unmanned probes and moon-orbiting satellites, due to the budget cuts and NASA focusing more on Earth-orbit missions (like ISS).

Luckily, there are already plans in motion for returning on our nearest companion. They're just not from the Stars & Stripes nation; who's rather focusing on manned missions to near-Earth asteroids or to Mars. Instead, a group of emerging nations is going to take the chance, with China planning to send its own astronauts on the moon by late 2020s, while also going to build its own moon base there, with Russia soon going to follow.

And I can't forget the recent uprising of private space agencies funded by world's billionaires; these new companies could eventually even overcome the developed nations in their lunar progress.

3. Manned Mars Exploration

A most talked about and publicly known future space trend, successfuly delivering a human being to another planet would be an even more impressive feat than delivering it to the moon. With that said, it would also be a tremendously more expensive task, requiring cutting-edge technologies and a huge amount of human commitment.

I am afraid it's not going to happen anytime soon, though. Realistic predictions for manned Mars missions are placing the event around early 2030s, when our technology becomes advanced enough that a task of such scale is financially feasible.

If we're talking about permanent human bases on Mars, it's going to be much further in the future; so far it cannot be realistically predicted. Maybe 2050, who knows. The fact is, it's not going to happen anytime near, and the optimistical predictions are probably not going to happen.

4. Space Tourism

Who of you wouldn't want to go to space? Fly around earth like in Gravity in a comfortable, luxurius orbit modul or a space hotel? Well, your dream might actually become a reality in the next few decades.

With a few very, very rich people actually paying the astonishing amount of money to conduct such a trip in a period between 2001-2009, space tourism has never been something with appeal to an ordinary man.

Lot of technology breakthroughs and private company uprisings will happen in the next few decades, that will allow commercialization space on even greater levels. The first turist orbiting moon could actually be around the end of this decade.

5. Search for Aliens

The answer to the millenia-asked question „Are we alone in the universe“ is going to be even more crucial than before, with new exoplanets found every month, with their current number of around 1800 and increasing.

This is one of the most unpredictable trends of all time; aliens could be very far away, or they could find us in the next few years. Either way, such a collision of two civilizations would be extremely dangerous for us or for them, depending on their level of technology.

Conclusion

So, there you have it, the 5 most prominent future space trends. Feel free to comment and share this on any sharing site you want.

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