American astronaut Joseph Tanner waves to the camera during a space walk as part of the STS-115 mission to the International Space Station, September 2006.
An impressive series of experimental studies and daring flights took place in space last year. With SpaceX, NASA, and countries like China all picking up their space projects, and 2021 aims to be much more thrilling, here's what you should anticipate for the next year.
Early 2021: SN9 Starship Test
Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to take the next Starship on its way to outer space in the coming weeks.
The trio of strong Raptor engines from SpaceX is attached, and they already wheeled Starship SN9 onto the launchpad on December 2020. It indicates that the revolutionary firm's prototype could theoretically launch later this month.
February 2021: NASA Rover Perseverance To Land on Mars
NASA's Perseverance is expected to land on Mars at approximately Thursday, February 18, 3.30pm EST.
Perseverance would have to endure the infamous Seven Minutes of Fear first, as it slows quickly in a mere 420 seconds from 12,000 mph to a complete halt on the rusty-red board.
This marks just the beginning of a spectacular Martian exploration year, with the launch of a Chinese rover and lander later in the year also predicted.
March 2021: Launch of Boeing Starliner OFT-2
As part of NASA's Commercial Crew Initiative, Boeing's cone-shaped CST-100 Starliner spacecraft will bring astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).
However, last month, the first orbital flight test encountered an "anomaly" with the spacecraft clock, indicating CST-100 did not hit the ISS as expected and returned to Earth unexpectedly two days later instead.
But if this launch goes according to schedule, it could pave the way for astronauts to launch later in the year inside the Boeing capsule.
April/May 2021: Chinese Rover Tianwen-1 lands on Mars
JIUQUAN, CHINA - SEPTEMBER 29: A Long March 2F rocket carrying the country's first space laboratory module Tiangong-1 lifts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on September 29, 2011 in Jiuquan, Gansu province of China. The unmanned Tiangong-1 will stay in orbit for two years and dock with China's Shenzhou-8, -9 and -10 spacecraft with the eventual goal of establishing a manned Chinese space station around 2020.
In July 2020, Tianwen-1, China's triple-threat spacecraft to Mars, left Earth and is expected to reach Mars orbit in February.
However, for a few more months, China will not attempt a touchdown, with business insiders penciling-in late April or early May for the historic occurrence.
May 2021: Total Lunar Eclipse / Flower Moon
You have a lunar eclipse as the Earth's shadow surrounds the sky. It is a complete lunar eclipse while the whole moon is shadowed. And it's known as the Flower Moon because there's a new moon in May. That's how you have a complete celestial flower moon eclipse. This is 2021's first significant astronomical occurrence, by the way. CNET has provided a helpful eclipse viewing guide here. As it gets closer to May, we can have a more significant report.
June 2021: Boeing Flight Evaluation Team
Provided all turn out exactly as planned in March, Boeing's Starliner could fly its first crewed test flight this June for the ISS.
This will be Boeing's spacecraft's last test before it becomes completely operational, close to SpaceX's Demo-2 launch in 2020.
June 10, 2021: Ring of Fire Eclipse
The Ring of Fire eclipse will occur across most of the Northern Hemisphere on June 10. If the moon partly covers illumination, a ring of fire eclipse happens, leaving a blinding ring of fire in the atmosphere. The most recent eclipse (in technical words, an "annular" eclipse) occurred in 2020 and it was magnificent. Russia, Canada, and Greenland would be the best locations to screen, although there will be loads of live streams and places to watch this one, we believe. As it gets closer, we'll give you all the information.
July 22: NASA launches an asteroid mission from DART
NASA's US-based space agency's mission to smash into an asteroid could kick off in July when it moves for Space Rock 68503 Didymos.
This rogue space rock boasts in its orbit a tiny twin, called Dimorphous.
This smaller Great Pyramid-sized asteroid would smash through NASA's enthusiastically Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.
This will be accompanied by a project from the European Space Agency, expected to commence in 2024.
This is aimed at researching the impact crater and how it altered the orbit and properties of Dimorphos.
October 16, 2021: NASA Lucy Debut
Lucy is one of the most successful missions on the 2021 NASA schedule, an ambitious effort to visit eight asteroids over the next ten years.
Hopefully, Lucy would become the first spacecraft to research a community of asteroids identified as the Trojans similar to Jupiter.
The mission is named for an ancestral human found in Ethiopia's fossilized bones, which rewrote the history books on human evolution.
October 31, 2021: Launch of NASA's James Webb Telescope
NASA's long-delayed upcoming space telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope's intended replacement, is likely to be unveiled in October.
James Webb Telescope is a significant improvement to astronomers' capability to research the early universe, and it may eventually be able to look into the oldest galaxies ever created while operating.
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