2020 was a big year for space exploration, and based on what is scheduled for 2021, we are in for another year of chaos, milestones, and general space badassery. February is a big month for space travel on Mars. The United Arab Emirates’ Hope orbiter is expected to reach the Martian environment on February 9. This is a significant milestone for the country and marks its first successful booth that has given a deep space ship sight. The next day, the Chinese Tianwen-1 was ready to reach the Red Planet. After a few months of exploring its environment, the spacecraft will send a man to Mars from May to May. When successful, that was the first time China had placed a ship on another planet.
These are not the only space missions to Mars in February – the NASA Perseverance rover is expected to arrive on the planet on February 18. Perseverance will even go for a landing, and once settled on the Martian surface, it will begin to hunt for signs of ancient alien life – something no other rover has tried. During his time on Mars, he will launch a small solar-powered helicopter, marking the first controlled flight attempt on another planet. In partnership with NASA, two private companies, Astrobotic Pittsburgh and Houston’s Intuitive Machines will send landlords to the moon in 2021. These landlords will carry a total of 16 tests and technical demos designed to NASA help prepare for upcoming crew missions to the moon.
This year, NASA also plans to test the Space Launch System rocket and Orion MPCV capsule they developed for the crew’s monthly missions. The current plan is for the launch to be launched in November, but it has been postponed dozens of times, so maybe just mark it in pencil. On July 22, a window will open for the launch of NASA’s “Terra Double Asteroid Redirection” or “DART”. Normally, NASA intentionally crashes into nothing during its space missions, but if a large asteroid hit Earth, it could do enormous damage. In anticipation of such a situation, NASA wants to be able to put the outer asteroid into space by breaking an inner space, so the agency has already tested the device on the ground. asteroid system is not a threat to our planet. NASA is not just planning to destroy asteroids – in October, it plans to launch Lucy, a mission to study ancient asteroids on Jupiter. Those asteroids are 4 billion years old – the captain from the time our bodies were born. However, examples have recently been explored – hopefully, Lucy will be able to unravel some of their secrets.
Also in October, NASA plans to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, the long-awaited successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. This highly anticipated spacecraft is expected to provide an unprecedented glimpse into some of the most distant objects in all space and time, giving us an idea of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang, and perhaps even help in the search for extraterrestrial life.
