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01:26

This was the year India "broke the curse" and landed on the moon, making 2023 an "absolutely fabulous" year for space travel, according to geological expert Professor James W. Head III.

Looking back at what was a fascinating and progressive 12 months in space exploration, the Professor in Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences at Brown University spoke of his excitement at the developments 2023 had brought in his field.

It's also what comes next which has him on the edge of his seat.

An image of a spiral galaxy like our own Milky Way, known as Messier 74, is seen in a composite image taken by the James Webb Telescope this year. /NASA/ESA/Handout via Reuters

"Every year I tell my new students, this is the best possible time you could be going into planetary science. And I'm thinking, wait, I say that every year. But it's absolutely true: 2023 was absolutely fabulous," Head told CGTN Europe.

"We launched JWST (the James Webb Space Telescope), the European Space Agency, to the Jupiter system. We have the Juno already there. We have Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter going on. We have two Mars rovers, one Mars Orbiter. Great results from the Chinese rover on Mars.

"India broke the curse, if you will, and was successful in landing Chandrayaan-3 on the moon. This is spectacular. One of the best things is that China opened up its access to their Chang'e 5 lunar return samples to the international community and NASA approved us and funded investigators to actually apply for those samples.

"We celebrated the 23rd anniversary of human presence in space with the International Space Station and Shenzhou... fabulous missions. The Chinese space station was completed. The youngest crew ever was set up there. The only thing is that 2024 seems to be even better."

Kailasavadivoo Sivan, former chairman of the Indian Space Development Organization (ISRO), was behind the launch of Chandrayaan-2

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Head also explained that the planned robotic Chinese lunar exploration mission, scheduled for 2024, a repurposed back-up to Chang'e-5, will aim to bring to Earth a sample of lunar soil from one of the most fascinating areas on the far side of the moon.

With the findings lunar experts hope to make regarding reducing the mass needed to go to the moon, it all adds up to a potentially ground-breaking 12 months ahead.

"I'm really looking forward to the Chang'e 6 mission, which will be the first lunar sample return from the far side of the moon," added Head.

"The international community is just totally excited. We don't have samples from the far side of the moon. That's half the moon. We've been actually trying to understand how you can reduce the mass you have to take to the moon.

"You don't want to take a lot of bricks and cinderblocks to the moon. So we've actually been doing research on bio bricks. It would be grown in situ, on the moon. It's made up of mushrooms. It's mycelium. You take the spores at the center of the seeds to the moon. You mix them with water and regolith and things like this and you build these bio bricks.”

"We're doing this research for the future of NASA to try to understand how we can reduce the up mass and build houses on the moon.

"We're actually looking at how you apply this to building houses on Earth so we can reduce the catastrophe coming from international migration and things like that where people don't have a place to live. So all of these applications really come back to Earth and help as well."