Multiple space agencies plan to send astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts to the moon in the coming years, with the long-term goal of establishing a permanent human presence there. This includes the NASA-led Artemis Program, which aims to create a "sustained program of lunar exploration and development" by the decade's end. There's also the competing Russo-Chinese International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) effort to create a series of facilities "on the surface and/or in orbit of the moon" that will enable lucrative research.

Beyond these government-agency-led programs, there are many companies and non-government organizations (NGOs) hoping to conduct regular trips to the moon, either for the sake of "lunar tourism" and mining or to build an "International Moon Village" that would act as a spiritual successor to the International Space Station (ISS). These plans will require a lot of cargo and freight moving between Earth and the moon well into the next decade, which is no easy task.

On Aug. 12, 2018—five years ago this week—NASA's Parker Solar Probe blasted off atop a powerful Delta IV rocket from what is now Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The predawn launch into the skies over the Florida coast marked the start of a game-changing mission to unlock the secrets of the solar wind—and the culmination of decades of development to craft a robotic explorer able to withstand the heat and radiation near the sun like no other spacecraft before it.

Designs for a "solar probe" started coming together in 1962, just four years after the National Research Council's Space Studies Board first proposed a mission to explore the environment near the sun.