By: Buzz Staff
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Last Updated: December 19, 2021, 13:37 IST
Year Ender 2021 in Space: Major Space Missions of Year That Were Remarkable for Human Spaceflight. (Representative image by Shutterstock)
2021 has been a remarkable year for space exploration which saw over a hundred space missions, most of which were successful. Of everything this year, humans achieved an unprecedented feat of flying a man-made object in the sky of some other world, by flying the Ingenuity helicopter, which accompanied NASA’s Perseverance rover to Mars, on the red planet. Now that our blue planet is bidding 2021 adieu by finishing its current cycle around the Sun, let us look at arguably the important space missions that happened this year.
Mars, Mars and Mars
Three Mars missions, you read that right. In 2021, three nations – United Arab Emirates, China and the United States – managed to send their space probes to the red planet. All of the three missions arrived in Martian orbit in February. The two missions, which had land rovers – NASA’s Perseverance and China National Space Administration (CNSA)’s Zhurong – managed to land to the red planet’s surface.
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NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on February 18 and Zhurong arrived a bit later on May 14. UAE’s Hope orbiter entered Martian orbit on February 9. Although all three of these missions were launched in 2020, their arrival is too significant not to count in this year’s achievements.
Billionaires, Private Space Flights
2021 could also appear as a year when you could finally believe that certain someone selling you a ticket to space is not a scam. Do not forget to fact-check their claims with the celebrity physicist Neil Tyson though. In July, when commercial spaceflight company Virgin Galactic’s top management including the company’s founder Richard Branson flew to a height of 86 kilometres, Tyson contested Virgin Galactic's space travel claim by saying it was a suborbital flight.
Nine days later, Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos’ commercial spaceflight company sent its first crew including Bezos and his brother to a height of 107 kilometres. Bezos’ flight was suborbital as well but it reached the 100-km high Kármán line, a debated definition of the boundary of space. In September, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, hired by Shift4 Payments’ Chief Executive Officer and billionaire Jared Issacman, took four private passengers to space. These flights announced the opening of spaceflight, albeit just for the rich, as a recreation industry as well.
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A Station in Space
In April 2021, China launched its Tiangong space station which is being built in low-earth orbit. After 10 years of being banned from the International Space Station by the United Stations, China finally has a station of its own in space. The station will host experiments from several countries including India and Russia.
The International Space Station also received an upgrade in June this year with its new solar panels, which were carried by the Russian Nauka module and NASA’s SpaceX Cargo Mission.
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Eyes in space
Talking of humanity’s eyes in space, NASA’s aged Hubble space telescope ran into repeated errors this year. The space agency is set to send its new generation James Webb Telescope on December 22 before the year ends, but since the project has been facing delays for long, further delays will not be surprising. And there has been naming controversy with JWST as well.
Overall, 2021 in space exploration has been quite happening.
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