Space Calendar January 2022: Events Occurring in Space

These dates are subject to change. Launch dates are taken from Space.com.

January 2: The new moon arrives at 1:33 p.m. EST (1833 GMT).

January 2-3: The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks.

January 4: Happy perihelion day! Earth is closest to the sun today.

January 5: Conjunction of the moon and Jupiter. The waxing crescent moon will swing about 4.5 degrees to the south of Jupiter in the evening sky.

January 7: Mercury reaches its greatest eastern elongation from the sun in its current evening apparition. The innermost planet will be shining brightly at magnitude -0.6. Catch the elusive planet above the western horizon shortly after sunset. It will reach its highest altitude in the evening sky on January 11.

January 10: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Transporter 3 rideshare mission with several small satellites for government and industry customers. It will lift off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

January 15: Astra's Rocket 3.3 will launch the S4 Crossover technology demonstration mission from the Pacific Spaceport on Kodiak Island, Alaska.

January 17: The full moon of January, known as the Wolf Moon, arrives at 6:48 p.m. EST (2348 GMT).

January 21: A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the fifth and sixth satellites for the U.S. Space Force's Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program, in a mission titled USSF 8. It will lift off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

January 27: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch another batch of satellites into orbit for OneWeb's satellite internet constellation. The mission, called OneWeb 13, will lift off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

January 29: Conjunction of the moon and Mars. The waning crescent moon will pass just 2.4 degrees north of the Red Planet. Look for the pair in the dawn sky in the constellation Sagittarius.

Also scheduled to launch in January (from Spaceflight Now):

SpaceX's Starship could launch on its first orbital test flight from the company's "Starbase" facility, which is near the South Texas village of Boca Chica.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the second COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG 2) radar surveillance satellite for the Italian space agency. It will lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a batch of Starlink broadband internet satellites from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A Rocket Lab Electron rocket will launch two small satellites for BlackSky Global's Earth observation fleet. It will lift off from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.

Virgin Orbit's LauncherOne rocket will launch on its fourth flight and its second operational mission, carrying a group of small government and commercial satellites. It will air-launch from a Boeing 747 carrier jet called "Cosmic Girl," which will take off from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Source: SPACE.com