Space exploration was affected last year by the pandemic. But in another otherwise challenging, exhausting 2020, we were somehow able to make our way through the universe.
For room on the field and out in the vacuum, the coming year shapes up to be almost as curiously busy. Here are some of the missions on which to keep an eye out.
Trio Missions to Mars
February will be an interesting month for Mars lovers. Not one, not two, but three missions would greet the advent of the Red Planet.
The Hope spaceship of the United Arab Emirates, or Al Amal, would be the first to appear. The mission, scheduled to land on February 9, would bring useful data regarding Mars' atmosphere and the weather back to the planet. If all goes well, this would be the first Arab expedition to Mars, or, for that matter, the world.
On February 18, NASA's Perseverance will land on Mars' Jezero Crater, the location of a former lake, where it will undertake the most detailed quest to date for past existence on Mars.
The car-sized Perseverance rover, constructed on the same simple bones as the Curiosity rover that has been hauling away on Mars since 2011, holds numerous resources designed to check for evidence of past microbial existence. Ingenuity, a miniature helicopter that will show the first controlled flight conducted from another planet's atmosphere, will also be deployed. And more critically, Perseverance can conceal the most intriguing samples from Mars so that they can be gathered and taken back to Earth as early as 2031.
Ever discreet regarding its space program, China has not said precisely when its groundbreaking Tianwen-1 spacecraft will land on Mars. It is planned to stay in orbit by mid-February before sending a lander carrying a rover to the surface in May. China would become the third nation to land anything on Mars if it succeeds.
Next-generation planet observatory
This year would also see the completion of the much-delayed and widely awaited James Webb Space Telescope, troubled with technological difficulties and mounting costs (fingers crossed). The Hubble Space Telescope's successor will be located about 932,000 miles from Earth on October 31, where it will afford us unparalleled views of the cosmos in infrared; it will be the biggest telescope ever mounted in space, with the light-gathering capacity of Hubble 100 times.
Eric Smith, the software scientist for NASA Webb, said in a statement that Webb is built to draw on the amazing legacies of the space telescopes Hubble and Spitzer by studying the infrared universe and discovering every step of celestial history,
The observatory would observe light from the first wave of galaxies that evolved since the Big Bang in the early universe and research the atmospheres of surrounding exoplanets for future habitability indicators.
'Lucy' and carbon-rich objects in the sky
NASA is expected to fly the Lucy spacecraft in October. Lucy would meet the so-called Jovian Trojans during her 12-year mission: asteroids that have the same trajectory as Jupiter but orbit hundreds of millions of miles ahead or behind the earth, stuck there by the influence of the giant planet. The Trojan asteroids are believed to contain keys to knowing the early Solar System and maybe also clues to the source of the planet's organic material.
To the Moon and back!
There are also firing missions for this year's Moon.
The first NASA Artemis flight, an uncrewed research mission known as Artemis 1, is scheduled to be conducted in November 2021. The project would offer an incentive for engineers back on Earth to determine how the spacecraft functions in deep space and function as a prelude to the return of humans to the Moon by 2024.
India plans to fly its third lunar flight in March: Chandrayaan-3. Since the Vikram lander's crash on the Chandrayaan-2 launch in 2019, this will be the second attempt to land on the Moon. The Chandrayaan-3 rover would touch down on the Aitken Basin of the lunar south pole, a 1,500-mile-wide scar formed when an asteroid crashed into the Moon around 3.9 billion years ago if all goes well.
Russia's welcoming shot, and after a decades-long hiatus, is classified as Luna 25 to reconfigure the Russian space program plans. The much-delayed role, which has been under construction since the late 1990s, is temporarily scheduled to begin in October 2021.
Commercial space's poster boy
SpaceX made history last year when the Crew Dragon spacecraft showed it would ferry NASA astronauts away from home, the International Space Station, to humanity's home. It is anticipated that SpaceX will make these kinds of trips normal, with two likely to happen later this year. And 2021 may also be the year we see the 165-foot-tall Spacecraft spaceship from SpaceX, planned to carry people to the Red Planet one day and make it into orbit. Despite a marvelous belly-flopping drama with an explosive climax, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, said last year he was "80 to 90 percent" sure that by the end of 2021, Starship will be ready.
Notable stuff to look for in the sky
And from your own house, you will feast your eyes on celestial spectacles. There will be a solar annular eclipse on June 10. This happens as the Moon is the furthest away from the Earth to block the Sun entirely, resulting in a bright ring across the darkened Moon. A partial solar eclipse can be seen in most of Europe and the northeastern United States. The Perseids, called that way because they seem to come from the star Perseus in the sky, might be the year's best meteor shower. In mid-August, the stellar light display will peak right at the height of summer. So, for 2021, here's an easy and wonderful resolution: Look up!
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